
a** h P a * 
Book - 



. CoEyrightW. 



COPHUCHT DEPOSK 



— 






(bOVER 

-FAr/vung 



BY HENRY WALLACE. 





V3 



WALLACES' FARM LIBRARY, NO 2. 

published by 
Wallace Poblibhing Co.. Deb Moines. Iowa. 



16*9. 


















Clover Farming 



BY 

HENRY WALLACE 

EDITOR OF "WALLACES' FARMER." AUTHOR OF 

'CLOVER CULTURE," "UNCLE HENRY'S 

LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY," ETC. 



DBS MOINES, IOWA 
WALLACE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1898 



25313 



• » 
» j 






. refJCCe. 

In the year 1892 I published my first oook on 
the clovers, entitled "Clover Culture/' A sec- 
ond edition having been demanded for a year 
pa^t, 1 took it up to determine what degree of 
revision was necessary to meet the present wants 
of the American farmer. I thought at first that 
most of it might pass if two or three chapters 
were prepared by way of leading the farmer, 
and especially the farmer who had never suc- 
ceeded to his satisfaction in growing clover, up 
to the consideration of the main topics discussed. 
After these had been prepared, I became so dis- 
satisfied with the book that I determined to re- 
write it almost entirely, with the distinct object 
in view of making a book about clover that 
would be interesting from the first page to the 
last, to the farmer's boy to whom clover is a fa- 
miliar plant but who has never studied it close- 
ly; to the farmer who has not succeeded fully in 
bis efforts to secure a crop; to the successful farm- 
er who had a full appreciation of the merits of 
that remarkable family of plants; and as well to 
the townsman in search of information with a 
view of spending his last days on a well ordered 
farm. 



The present volume has been written from the 
standpoint of the farmer. At the beginning of 
each chapter I have asked myself, what is the 
next thing the farmer, and especially his boy, 
needs to know on this subject? I have avoided as 
far as possible all scientific and technical terms, 
and in stating facts and principles have endeav- 
ored to show how they may be applied with 
profit To what extent I have succeeded in this, 
the reader is the best judge. 

HENRY WALLACE. 
Des Moines, Iowa, 1898. 



CHAPTER I. 

AN OBJECT LESSON IN THE PASTURE. 

fF AN observant farmer will take a 
walk any time during the growing 
season in the pasture, and note with 
even a little care the various grasses grow- 
ing so luxuriantly about him, he can 
scarcely fail to observe the wide difference 
between the clovers and the other, or true, 
grasses. Whatever differences there may 
be in size, form and structure, he will no- 
tice that all other grasses have long, com- 
paratively slender and coarse leaves, 
clasped firmly around the stalk by a 
sheath; that they have at intervals solid 
nodes or joints; and that by means o\ 
these they are able, even with a hollow 
stalk and very little solid substance, to 
withstand a severe windstorm. 

He will notice at the same time that 



CLOVER FARMING. 



the leaves of the clover are entirely aff- 
erent; that they are very thin — as thin as 
fine paper — and arranged, not singly or 
alternately on the opposite sides of the 
stalk, but in triplets at the end of a small 
stem; and that the plants have no nodes 
or joints, hence are inclined to lie down 
about the time .they attain full growth, and 
some of them before. Comparing the 
grasses with wheat, oats, barley or rye, he 
will note that these have the same form 
and structure as blue grass, timothy, red 
top and orchard grass, and hence are real- 
ly grasses, the function of which ; s to 
grow seeds instead of forage. A little 
reflection will show him that corn of all 
varieties, all kinds of canes and sorghums, 
are really giant grasses, and all built on 
the same general plan as the grasses in 
the pasture. 

If he will examine the root develop- 
ment of any of the clovers, he will discov- 
er that it differs as widely from that of 
the other grasses as does the loaf structure 
and stalk formation. In the true grasses 



AN OBJECT LESSON IN THE PASTURE. ? 

he will find a great mass of fibrous xoots 
penetrating, in dry times, to great depths 
— in the case of blue grass and corn, to a 
depth of four feet or more — while the clo- 
vers send their main roots down straight 
as far as may be necessary, and the char- 
acter of the subsoil permits, to reach per- 
manent moisture. They are thus the sub- 
soilers of the pasture field and bring up 
from the lower depths soil fertility that 
has been washed down by the rains, and 
in their decay leave it where it can be 
reached readily by the roots of other 
grasses, thus gradually and almost imper- 
ceptibly deepening as well as enriching 
the soil of the farm. 

If he will now pull up a plant of any of 
the varieties of clover and examine the 
roots closely, he will find on each a num- 
ber of nodules or protuberances, called 
tubercles from their similiarity to certain 
formations in the lungs of consumptive 
patients. A close examination will show 
that these are not parasites, or an evidence 
of disease, nor yet root seeds, as some 



8 CLOVKK FARMING. 

suppose, but plants separate from the clo- 
ver, and a fine example of what scientists 
call "symbiosis," or associated life. Similar 
tubercles may be found, on examination, 
on the roots of peas, beans, wisteria, milk- 
weed, locust trees, and some thousands of 
other trees, shrubs and weeds which be- 
long to the order known to botanists as 
the "leguminosae," and which always and 
everywhere increase the fertility of the 
soil on which they grow. These tubercles 
are essential to the thrift, if not indeed the 
life, of all plants, shrubs and trees of this 
order, and, as we will explain hereafter, 
are the means by which they alone of all 
orders and classes of vegetable life' are 
enabled to avail themselves of the nitro- 
gen of the atmosphere. This, as we shall 
see hereafter, is a matter of the very first 
importance in agriculture. Suffice it to 
say now, that this explains (what has been 
a matter of common observation among 
farmers for two thousand years) why all 
crops do well after clover. While all 
plants that have green coloring matter in 



AN OBJECT LESSON IN THE PASTURE. 9 

their leaves obtain their carbon from the 
atmosphere, the order known as the 
leguminosae, or legumes, alone, so far as 
our present, knowledge extends, is the 
only one that is able to obtain its nitro- 
gen from the same source. While plants 
of this order obtain their carbon through 
their leaves, they secure their nitrogen, 
or that portion of their substance which, 
when fed to animals, contributes to the 
formation of flesh, muscle, red meat, from 
the atmospheric air which circulates 
around their roots. 

Returning from the walk in the pasture 
and garden, the thoughtful farmer may 
remember that his father, dead perhaps 
long years since, often remarked: "We 
may reasonably expect a good crop of 
corn this year, because it is planted on 
clover sod;" or % "We are sure of a good 
crop of wheat next year because we are 
drilling it in this fall on clover fallow;" or, 
"The blue grass will make fat cattle this 
year because it has plenty of white clover 
in it." He may have heard his mother, 



10 CLOVER FARMING. 

of sainted memory, remark: "When there 
is good clover hay going into the barn, 
the cows will give plenty of milk next 
winter;" or, his father say: "The steers are 
making great gains because they have 
clover ha)- with their corn;" or, "We shall 
have strong lambs and plenty of them 
with this bright clover hay for winter 
feed." He may have heard his grand- 
father say (with all the pride which old 
men manifest when talking of their 
achievements when young men) as he 
smoked his pipe on a summer evening on 
the front porch: "This farm was badly run 
down when I bought it, but I made a good 
farm out of it with clover. Stick to clo- 
ver, John, and you will never be a poor 
man." 

If the farmer is a man of some reading 
as well as observation and experience, he 
may remember that the improvement in 
live stock in England took place shortly 
after English farmers began generally to 
grow clover, and that they began, in fact, 
to grow clover before any of the cultivat- 



AN OBJECT LESSON IN THE PASTURE. 11 

ed, true grasses; and further, that live 
stock improvement has kept right on ad- 
vancing with the western advance of the 
clover area. If his boy has been to the 
academy or high school, and has secured 
an English translation of Virgil, which he 
has been using on the sly as a "pony" to 
help him over the hard places, he may be 
able to point out such passages as the fol- 
lowing, scattered through the writings of 
that wise old book farmer, who wrote some 
two thousand years ago: 

"At least, where vetches, pulse and tares have stood 
And sta ks of lupines grew, (a stubborn wood) 
The ensuing season in return may bear 

The bearded product of the golden year. 
For flax and oats will burn the tender field, 
And sleepiug poppies harmful harvest yield." 

— (ieoigic 1st, Dryden's Trans. 

We find Virgil giving directions as to 
sowing the legumes in the following: 

"Sow beans and cl ..ver on the rotten soil, 

****** 

Vile vetches would you sow and lentils lean, 
The growth of Egypt, or the kidney bean, 
Begin when the slow wagon r descends, 
Nor cease your sowiug till n idsummer ends." 

[bid 

The old poet had some notions about 



12 CLOVEIi FAKM1NG. 

clover as food for dairy cows, for he sings: 

"If milk be thy design, 
Bring clover grass," 

If, turning these facts over in his mind, 
the reader will note carefully the farmers 
in his neighborhood who grow large crops 
and to whom farming (and money-mak- 
ing as well) seems to come easy, he will 
find that they are clover growers, some of 
them, in fact, known in the neighborhood 
as "clover cranks," and that clover with 
them is the beginning and the ending, the 
Alpha and Omega of their favorite rota- 
tion, and also that for some reason their 
stock of ail kinds seems to thrive in a way 
that is a continual surprise to men who do 
not grow clover. 

\s it not, therefore, worth while to study 
A plant, or family of plants, that has be- 
hind it such a wonderful history; to know 
not only what it did for farmers twenty 
centuries ago in ancient Rome, what it 
has been doing every where since, where- 
ever it has been properly cultivated, but 
how it does it and how it can be used to 



AN OBJECT LESSON IX THE PASTURE. 13 

the best advantage to grow larger crops 
on the farm, finer stock in the yards and 
pastures, and thus fill the home — the best 
thing about the farm — with peace and 
comfort? 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FARMER AND THE CLOVERS. 

♦ffT IS no longer a question what the 
farmer will do with the clovers, but 
what he will do without them. The 
vital problem at present is, what will he 
do to be saved from soil exhaustion — in- 
evitable where the crop is sold in the mar- 
ket off the farm — from soil washing, from 
drouth as the result of the exhaustion of 
vegetable mold, or humus, in the soil — 
inevitable on any farm where grain culti- 
vation is continuous — and from the severe 
competition of other farmers who know 
how to use clover. Fertility is the stored 
energy of the farm, without which the 
farm is only a place in which fertility may 
be stored at large expense in the future. 
The present value of the farm is measured 
by its available fertility; its future value 



THE FARMER AND THE CLOVERS. 15 

by its possible fertility. The rest is rock, 
clay, sand and gravel, of little or no value 
i for agricultural purposes; practically a 
place on which crops may stand while 
they use what fertility may be present. 

Fertility once lost may be restored by 
periodical inundation, as in the Nile valley; 
by the application in large quantities of 
barnyard manures, as on farms near towns 
and cities; by the purchase of grain, meals 
and forage for feeding purposes, as on 
stock farms in the British Islands; by the 
purchase of commercial fertilizers, as in 
the eastern states and in Europe; or by 
growing the clovers. The last method, in 
connection with the manure made on his 
own farm, is the only method at all avail- 
able for the farmers of the western and 
middle states, and is a much better meth- 
od for the farmer in the eastern states 
than the unintelligent purchase of com- 
mercial fertilizers. 

There was a time when the farmer could 
safely ignore the clovers. When the farm- 
ers of the eastern and middle states 



16 CLOVER FARMING. 

were clearing out the forests and scratch- 
ing with rude implements into a soil en- 
ric'ied by the leaf mold of ages and the 
as'ies from log heaps and brush piles — 
soil, sure to produce thirty, sixty or a 
hundred fold — while he was waiting for 
the roots and stumps to rot, he did not 
then need to concern himself with the 
clover question. When the western farm- 
er was breaking out his eighty, or his 
quarter, and meanwhile grazing his cattle 
on free grass, grown on land owned by the 
government or the speculator, who paid 
heavy taxes to build schoolhouses, bridges 
and public buildings; when the soil was 
full of grass roots and his unfenced fields 
waved, under an}- sort of cultivation, with 
golden harvests; when the cow could hide 
herself in the tall blue stem of the uplands 
and the hat of the rider alone was visible 
as he galloped through the tall grass on 
the bottoms; when weeds vexed not the 
soul of the settler, there was no need for 
him to trouble himself about the clover 
question. 



THE FARMER AND THE CLOVERS. 17 

These were the days of the pioneer, 
when all farmers were equal because 
equally poor in purse and rich in good 
feeling and brotherly kindness; all alike 
soil robbers, scattering with a lavish hand 
the fertility which nature had been care- 
fully storing for them since the first of all 
farmers was turned out of Eden, probably 
because he did not have enough to do to 
keep him out of mischief. 

One generation of soil robbers has gen- 
erally been enough to waste this heritage 
to the extent that farming on their meth- 
ods failed to be profitable. Then came 
drouths, with no less average rainfall than 
in the years of abundant crops; for the 
humus, or vegetable mold, had been de- 
stroyed by constant cultivation without 
manure and without the rotation of grass. 
Grasshoppers, chinch bugs, blight, plagues 
without end, then attacked the scanty 
crops. The mortgage followed, and the 
soil robber, having reached the end of his 
tether, and brought up with a short turn, 
the meaning of which he did not full)- un- 



18 CLOVER FARMING. 

derstand, was forced to do some thinking 
and determine whether he and his would 
persevere in soil robbing or become farm- 
ers indeed, and consider, as all good 
farmers in clover growing countries do, 
not what they will do with clover, but 
how they are to get along without it. 

When a magnet is moved slowly 
through a mixture of iron filings and dirt, 
it acts as a touchstone, attracting the iron 
to itself and allowing the dirt to remain. 
A good strong current of wind will blow 
out the dirt and leave the iron remaining. 
The knowledge of clover culture is the 
touchstone of the farmer when his furrows 
begin to complain of waning fertility, and 
separates the men who have the capacity 
to become true farmers from those who 
are merely soil robbers, which last are, 
sooner or later, driven westward by the 
tempest of financial adversity. The man 
who will seriously consider the clovers 
and consider his way to the right use of 
them, will soon learn the truth (which the 
soil robber never seems able to learn) 



THE FARMER AND THE CLOVERS 11) 

that no land, naturally good to begin with, 
can ever be wholly impoverished by one 
generation, or any number of generations, 
of soil robbers.- The good Lord, who has 
ever a watchful eye for the generations 
of the unborn, will not allow any race of 
soil robbers to impoverish the land to a 
degree that will render it impossible for a 
good farmer to restore its fertility. He 
has stored the average soil of farm lands, 
in every place where He intended men to 
live by farming, with inexhaustible 
amounts of every element of plant life ex- 
cept three or four compounds — potash, 
phosphoric acid, nitrogen, and in some 
places lime. The first two He has locked 
up in combinations which gives them out 
in available forms very slowly — grudging- 
ly, so to speak— so that but a small amount 
comparatively, is ever available at any one 
time for plant growth, and cannot, there- 
fore, be wasted. Nitrogen, without which 
the ash elements mentioned above cannot 
be used at all, is, in the form in which the 
plant uses it, easily washed out of the soil 



20 CLOVER FARMING. 

through drainage, natural or artificial, or 
down into the subsoil, but He has spread 
over the earth an atmosphere weighing 
fourteen pounds to the square inch, about 
four-fifths of which is nitrogen. Not an 
ounce of this, however, is available except 
by means of the microbes, or germs, 
which have their home, or workshop, in 
the little tubercles on the roots of the clo- 
vers and other legumes, whether they be 
so-called grasses, weeds or trees. It is by 
these He feeds all plants, and through 
them all animals, with one of the elements 
without which life in plant, tree, beast or 
man is impossible on this planet. 

The true farmer who has studied the 
clovers knows this, and hence does not 
hesitate to buy a wornout farm at its mar- 
ket value, assuming the mortgage which 
the soil robber has placed upon it, know- 
ing that a well clovered and well managed 
farm will in due time lift the mortgage 
and make the farm a delightful home. 
This is the history east, west, north and 
south, at home and abroad, in this land 
and in all lands. 



THE FARMER AND THE CLOVERS. 21 

The true farmer understands that there 
must be thorough tillage and a seed bed 
as perfect as possible in order that every 
atom of available, fertility may be within 
reach of the root hairs of the plants and 
not locked up in clods — in order, also, 
that the moisture may be available that 
the clovers may have a chance to germin- 
ate, throw out their rootlets, enter into 
associated life as partners with the plants 
which we call tubercles, and thus draw on 
the winds of heaven, or more exactly, the 
portion of the atmosphere that is driven 
into the soil, for the most valuable and 
costly element of fertility, and thus thrive 
and prosper independent of the nitrogen 
of the soil. 

The humus, or vegetable mold, may be 
worn out by long cultivation on the part 
of the soil robber, but the true farmer 
knows that when he comes to plow under 
the clover roots, with what manure he can 
command, he can restore it, and his land 
will no longer pack after heavy rains, or 
his crops fail in time of drouth when "the 



22 CLOVER FARMING 

heavens are as brass and the earth as iron." 
The true farmer knows that if his land 
be thin and not subsoiled, he can, by a ro- 
tation based on clover, gradually subsoil 
it by the use of clover, the roots of which 
go down da>' and night, Sabbath and Sat- 
urday, year in and year out, and by their 
decay admit air into the passages stored 
with marrow and fatness for all plant life. 
He knows, moreover, that even if the ash 
elements, compounds of potash and phos- 
phoric acid, be in small supply, the roots 
of the clovers can get them when other 
plants fail; that they have a way of com- 
pelling the rocky particles of the soil to 
give up their stores; and knows that he 
has fn the clover pastures and clover hay 
a stock feed that will put plenty of bone 
in his young and growing stock, that will 
cover the bones with muscles, and, with 
cheap corn, interlard them with fat. 
Hence, the man who understands clover 
is not afraid of ever wasting fertility, or of 
undertaking the task of restoring it when 
wasted, by sowing it on land naturally 
good to begin with. 



THE FARMER AND THE CLOVERS. 23 

The soil robber, or the farmer who will 
not consider the clovers and will not work 
with them, sells out in due time, or is per- 
haps sold out, and moves West, seeking 
other virgin soils, only to find, sooner or 
later, that there is no further agricultural 
West, and from a land owner becomes a 
tenant, from a tenant becomes a laborer, 
and finally drifts into the city to become 
a hewer of wood or a drawer of water. 

Consider the clovers. The time is fast 
coming, and in many places has already 
come, when the clover question deter- 
mines whether a man is capable of becom- 
ing a true farmer with a happy home and 
family, independent as only the farmer 
can be, or a soil robber, with calamity 
sooner or later in store for him and his. 
Study the clovers. 



CHAPTER HI. 

THE CLOVER FAMILY. 

^^^HERE are families — and families, 
t L whether among men, animals or 
plants. There are families among 
men, a few — a very few — the name of 
which is, in itself, a sufficient and favora- 
ble introduction of a member to the well- 
informed stranger; families that have had 
sufficient sense and family pride to pre- 
vent marriages with other families having 
a low code of morals, and have thus kept 
themselves clean and pure, living up to 
their highest ideals. There are other fam- 
ilies so uniformly low in their tastes and 
instincts, so corrupt in their lives and 
morals, living according to such a low 
standard, that they would degrade a name, 
however honorable it may have been once, 
and make it in time a byword and re- 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 25 

proach. In most families there is an in- 
termingling of the good and bad — cross 
currents of vice and virtue — Baldwins and 
crabs growing 'on the same family tree; 
and hence it has long since become a 
proverb: "There is a black sheep in every 
flock." "Who does he take it after?" 
(pardon the bad grammar; we must quote 
proverbs correctly) is the question that is 
asked at once by every close observer 
when a good family produces a scape- 
grace, or a low family a noble character. 

We may observe the same law at work 
in our families of Hve stock, even in those 
"bred to the purple" — the outcrop of orig- 
inal sin in the shape of a badly formed or 
colored animal, the result of some unfor- 
tunate cross, perhaps many generations 
since. 

We find the same law at work among 
families of plants. (I am quite well aware, 
O critical botanist, that the word "family" 
is not used in the same sense in botany 
that it bears in stock breeding, but rather 
in the sense of "species;" but you see I 



2G CI.OVKK FARMING. 

am writing for plain, common people who 
have never studied botany, and must use 
words in a popular, rather than a scientific 
sense.) 

There are some families of plants, a few 
— a very few — that have no positively bad 
members, although all of them seem to 
have some far out relations that are of but 
little account; and were the better mem- 
bers human beings, they would, perhaps, 
not care to know them, or acknowledge 
the rest. There are again other families 
that are so generally bad that we are 
greatly surprised if there are any members 
that prove themselves to be even respect- 
able". 

For instance, there is the nightshade 
family, giving us the deadly poison known 
as nightshade; the henbane, or hyoscia- 
mus — an equally deadly poison, although 
at times a valuable medicine; the foul- 
smelling jimson, or Jamestown; tobacco, 
despised by all who do not use it, and many 
who do. The family becomes a trifle re- 
spectable in the red pepper, beloved of 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 27 

the Greaser; still more so in the ground 
cherry; useful in the tomato and potato 
(sweet potatoes do not belong to this 
family); really beautiful in the petunia, 
and lovely in the white flowered nicotina. 

It is far otherwise with the clover fami- 
ily. There is no really vicious member in 
the whole family. There are some mem- 
bers of which it may be said, there is not 
much good about them, as, for example, 
some of the wild clovers, the buffalo clo- 
ver, or the sweet clover, which, however, 
is only a poor relation and not strictly a 
member of the family. Even in this we 
m . . be doing them wrong, and may in 
the future discover virtues now unsuspect- 
ed. The members of the clover family 
have no vices, though some of them have 
faults. (Gentle reader, who of us have 
not?) 

Our present talk is about the members 
of the clover family proper. First, as a 
matter of course, we take up the best 
known member — the common red. It is 
not so imposing in appearance as the 



28 CLOVEB FA K MING. 

mammoth, docs no*!: spread itself around 
in such a lordly fashion, nor attempt to 
smother out the other grasses that seek 
their share of moisture and sunlight in the 
same field. It is willing to associate with 
timothy, with mammoth clover, or orchard 
grass on terms of equality — a sort of dem- 
ocratic plant, willing to be accommodat- 
ing, to give and take, neighborly in its 
tastes, habits and instincts. Like a good 
many of the best men I have ever known, 
it is not quite selfish enough for its own 
good, and allows blue grass and white clo- 
ver, those monopolists of the pasture, 
(corporation monopolists at that, because 
perennial — with perpetual succession — 
while red clover is a biennial and expires 
by limitation) to plant themselves near it 
and finally surround it and strangle it to 
death, or at least smother out its posterity. 
When the farmer wishes, while resting 
his land from grain crops, to fill it up with 
the sort of fertility — nitrogenous — foi 
which all other grains and grasses are 
hungry, to grow first-class feed for any- 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 29 

thing that eats grass or hay, the common 
red clover is to be preferred above all 
other members of this royal family. There 
is no plant that grows out of the ground 
that will do more, and in so many differ- 
ent ways, for the quarter-section farmer. 
While furnishing, as do the rest of the 
family, fertility to the tired land, and of 
that precise kind which is most valuable 
in itself — the highest in price if purchased 
in the shape of commercial fertilizers — 
the most easily exhausted by leaching — 
it yields abundance of the kind of pasture 
and hay that is needed above all others to 
balance every other sort of grain, grass or 
forage grown on the farm. While all other 
crops uniformly do well after clover, all 
kinds of stock (with the exception, per- 
haps, of driving horses, and this for obvi- 
ous reasons) do well on clover hay, and 
for the same reason. To the soil the clo- 
ver roots supply the sort of fertility all 
other plants require and demand a.z a con- 
dition of profitable growth. To the ani- 
mal the clovers furnish the albuminoids, 



30 GLOVBK FAKMINU. 

in which nearly all other grains and grasses 
are deficient, and thus balances the ration. 

The common red is really the only clo- 
ver that is well adapted to the meadow — 
on good corn land. On this kind of land, 
if reasonably rich, the mammoth grows 
too coarse and the alsike furnishes too 
little forage. The white clover is not a 
meadow grass under any circumstances. 
It is a weed when in the meadow and 
should, therefore, be treated as any other 
weed. (Remember that a weed is simply 
a plant out of place, and the character of 
the plant cuts no figure, whatever.) There- 
fore, to the eighty-acre, the quarter-sec- 
tion, or even the half-section farmer, who 
is a stock grower as well, we say: "Con- 
sider the common red clover. It is the 
best of all the clovers for your ordinary 
purposes." 

The common red, however, does not 
suit the purposes of all farmers, and there 
are times, conditions and circumstances 
where the mammoth should be preferred 
on every farm. For instance, there are 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 31 

many farmers who have been soil robbers 
in the past, and, having repented, are 
now trying to reform and mend their ways. 
These men realize that they must have 
clover to restore fertility to their land, 
but do not see how they are to get along 
without a cash crop while this restoration 
is going on. They have no stock to speak 
of, no cattle barns or hay sheds, few 
fences and no money available for the 
purchase of stock (beyond their work 
horses and a few pigs) or to make im- 
provements necessary for profitable stock 
growing. Therefore, they do not need 
either the pasture or the hay that is fur- 
nished by a crop of common red clover or 
c'over and timothy. What they need is 
a crop from the clover field that does not 
need live stock to convert it into cash. 
This type of farmer should pin his faith, 
for the time being, to mammoth clover. 
If he secures a good stand, one that will 
smother out the weeds, he can reasonably 
expect a three-bushel seed crop, worth 
from #10 to $20 per acre, or about as much 



32 CLOVER FARMING. 

as any other crop, the cash expense of 
which, that is, the amount that he would 
be required to pay for outside labor if he 
does his own cutting and exchanges help 
in hulling time, will be about $3 per acre. 
By adopting a three-year course he can 
get over his entire farm with clover once 
in three years and increase his corn crop 
from fifteen to twenty- five bushels per 
acre each year, and his other crops, with 
the possible exception of oats, in the same 
proportion. 

It is quite possible with mammoth clo- 
ver to secure a month or six weeks pas- 
ture and a superior seed crop by pasturing 
closely up to June 1st, and in some sea- 
sons up to the 1 5th, and then allowing the 
seed crop to start. Farmers who have 
roughish lands at a distance from build- 
ings and do not need the hay, can use the 
mammoth to advantage on such lands. 

There are also times when, on account 
of the ravages of the clover seed midge, 
it becomes impossible to grow the com- 
mon red for seed, and the mammoth then 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 83 

becomes indispensable when a seed crop 
is desired. We will deal with this midge, 
in common with other insect enemies of 
the clover plant hereafter. It is enough 
at present to say that the common clover 
seed midge is two-brooded and that the 
broods are timed to correspond with 
the two flowering periods of the common 
red. The spring crop of females is ready 
to lay eggs when the clover heads first 
appear and before the bloom is on, and 
the second crop from the eggs of the first 
are ready to propagate the vile species 
when the second crop begins to head out. 
The mammoth, being from two to three 
weeks later, comes in between the two 
blooming periods and hence escapes the 
ravages of this enemy of the clover plant. 
While, therefore, for the average farmer 
the common red is the favorite member of 
the clover family, the mammoth has claims 
that entitle it to great respect, and, at 
times and under certain circumstances, to 
special consideration. 



34 CLOVER FARMING. 

The modest member of the family is 
the little white clover, or, as it is some- 
times called, the white Dutch. Like other 
modest folks, it is often underestimated 
and frequently misunderstood. It is of 
all others the clover for the permanent 
pasture — the intimate friend, the sworn 
companion and faithful ally of the blue 
grass. It accepts a hard lot on clay lands, 
worn out by the soil robber, that have 
been turned out to native grass, tenderly 
binding up this broken-hearted land, but 
fairly revels in luxuriance on rich bottoms. 
White clover and blue grass seem to us 
to have been married with a tie so binding 
that no district judge can grant a perma- 
nent divorce. . 

Like other married couples, they have 
their ups and downs. In certain years 
and in certain seasons of almost every 
year, the white clover seems to be the 
boss, crowding out, choking and smother- 
ing fne blue grass, and in other years ap- 
parently disappearing and leaving the 
field, only to return when circumstances 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 35 

are favorable. It is a good deal of a mo- 
nopolist, and when it gets out of the pas- 
ture and takes possession of the meadow, 
it is time for the plow, the disc, the har- 
row, and other treatment appropriate for 
weeds. From the standpoint of the bee- 
keeper, it is the sweetest and best of the 
family. It has, however, its faults. So 
have you, reader; so have the best of men. 
It is a monopolist, a bad trait in grass or 
man. It bloats both cattle and sheep at 
times. In certain seasons, and especially 
in July and August, it causes the horses 
to slabber. Sometimes in the hot days of 
August it makes' the brood sow's mouth 
water worse than the mouth of an eigh- 
teen-year-old boy ever watered at the 
sight of the smoking viands on the supper 
table after a hard day's threshing. None 
of the clovers, even, are perfect. Why 
should they be? We are not perfect our- 
selves, and should, therefore, bear with 
their infirmities. 

The most beautiful member of the fam- 
ily is, in our judgment, the alsike. It does 



36 CLOVER FARMING. 

not offend us with its rankness or coarse- 
ness, as do the red and mammoth. Its 
perfume is finer and more delicate than 
that of any other member of the family. 
Its color rests the eye. It does not want 
the earth with a fence around it. It ac- 
cepts a place either on the dry corn land, 
in the slough or swale, and produces, 
within reasonable bounds, in proportion 
to the moisture that is furnished. The 
experienced cow or ewe prefers its forage 
to that of any other member of the fami- 
ly. It grows no hairs on its stem to fill 
the mouth with dust or remind the old 
brood mare with the heaves that there is 
another winter's tribulation before her. 
Like all the rest of the family, it has its 
shortcomings. It produces scantily in 
dry, or moderately dry soils, and it fur- 
nishes but little aftermath. What else 
can be expected? How is it possible for 
any one individual in a family of plants 
to meet the whole round of agricultural 
requirements, even in one field? 

Another prominent member of the fam- 



THE CLOVER FAMILY. 37 

ily is the crimson clover. Unlike any of 
the members before mentioned, it is an 
annual. Like winter wheat, it is a winter 
annual, sown in the fall, coming to matur- 
ity in June, and then perishing. It is the 
friend of the truck farmer and orchardist 
south of latitude forty, but cannot stand 
the cold of northern winters. 

There are dozens of other members of 
this family, among which we might men- 
tion the buffalo clover, specimens of 
which may be found growing, in the corn 
belt, in waste places; the big headed clo- 
ver of the Pacific slope; the southern or 
what is sometimes called the Carolina clo- 
ver, all of which, while clever in their way 
and place, have but little interest to the 
Northern farmer, because they can do him 
but little service. 

The clover family has a great many 
cousins, some of them, for example the 
alfalfa of the plains, the Japan clover of 
the South, the bur clovers of California, 
are of the very highest excellence, filling 
their places as notably as any of the clo- 



88 CLOVER FARMING. 

ver family proper fill theirs. We will have 
something to say of some of them here- 
after. 

There are also a number of far out re- 
lations (such as the common sweet clover 
of the roadsides, greatly beloved by the 
bees and their keepers) of which we can 
say nothing bad, all of them, however, 
storing the soil with fertility, and thus fit- 
ting it for the production of the herb yield- 
ing seed and the tree bearing fruit, and 
thus contributing, in their modest way, to 
the happiness of the human race. 

It is a great pleasure to find that there 
is a family of plants, the members of 
which have no reason to be ashamed of 
each other — not even of their far out re- 
lations. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SOIL ROBBER'S DREAM. 

fT WAS Job Barshear's sixtieth birth- 
day. Job was getting old and he 
felt it. He had been a hard-work- 
ing farmer all his days. Through rain and 
shine, heat and cold, summer and winter, 
in good times and bad, Job had wrought 
hard, breaking out land and growing grain 
to sell for shipment to a distant market. 
He was born in Indiana, and knew all 
about clearing land, piling brush, and 
plowing clearings full of stumps and sound 
roots. He was reminded of this exper- 
ience on his sixtieth birthday by a twinge 
of rheumatism in the shin, once badly 
bruised by a root, one end of which he 
had cut off with a sharp hatchet he carried 
on his plow in those days. Every reader 
who has plowed a new clearing will sym- 
pathize with Job. 



40 CLOVER FARMING. 

' He had moved with his young wife, full 
of hope and courage, to Illinois, and bro- 
ken out an eighty. His crop of wheat on 
new breaking failed, and corn fell, just be- 
fore the civil war, to 8 cents a bushel. 
He therefore failed to make his payments 
and the mortgagee took his farm — of 
course. He sent his wife and baby back 
to her folks and enlisted. He was a splen- 
did soldier but promotion came not, and 
he came out as he went in — a high private. 
He had saved his wages, and once more 
undertook to improve a farm, this time in 
eastern Iowa. 

While he was getting his farm under 
cultivation all went well. Crops were 
good and prices high, but about 1867-1870 
the tide turned. He fought bravely on 
until the panic of 1873, then came a mort- 
gage — a veritable tapeworm to be fed with 
ever increasing bushels of grain — until in 
1880 he sold out, moved to western Iowa, 
and again undertook to open out a new 
farm. Here, again, times were good and 
prices high when he had nothing to sell; 



THE SOU. ROBBER'S DREAM. 41 

but when his farm was all broken out and 
in full crop, prices fell; and again came 
the inevitable mortgage. 

Meanwhile, his son and daughter had 
grown up, and as the natural result of 
hard work for which there never seemed 
to be any pay, were determined to leave 
the farm. On this evening of Job's sixti- 
eth birthday, young Job had said: 

"Father, what's the use of farming? It's 
hard work day after day, summer and 
winter. It's work all summer for nothing 
to get a job of hauling grain to town all 
winter for pay; or, work all winter for 
nothing to get fair wages in the summer. 
What have you to show for forty years' 
hard work? Nothing, that I can see, but 
a mortgaged farm which produces less and 
less every year." 

Poor old Job went to bed with a sad 
heart, after saying to his son: 

"Well, if you must leave the farm, go; 
I can't help it, though I don't know how 
I can get along without you. I suppose 
the farm must go, and that's all there is 
of it." 



42 CLOVER FARMING. 

And that night Job had a dream. A 
chorus of voices in the distance, which he 
recognized as those of young Job and his 
best girl, and his girl and her best fellow, 
were singing: 

"Home, sweet home ; 
There's no place like home." 

"If home is so sweet, why don't they 
stay in it, then?" thought Job. "There is 
not much sweetness that I ever found on 
a mortgaged farm." 

And then the tune changed into 

"We don't have to mortgage the farm." 

"Much good that does me," said Job. 
"I had to mortgage mine. It was either 
that or lose it. I wish they would go 
away and leave me to my sorrow." 

Then came another chorus with new 
and strange and sweetly musical voices, 
and a tune that Job had never heard be- 
fore, singing: 

"We'll lift the mortgage off of the farm." 

"That's the music for me," thought Job. 
"I wish they would come nearer." 

Nearer the voices came, with music soft 



THE SOIL ROBBER'S DREAM, 43 

and low, yet clear and confident, until the 
room was filled with the delightful song, 
and Job felt the presence of the singers 
around his bedside. As it ceased the 
tenor said: 

"Job Barshear, we have come, not to 
mock you with vain hopes, but to put new 
hope in your sad heart and new strength in 
your old tired bones. We are "The Clo- 
ver Quartette." If we are strangers to 
you, it is because you have not been will- 
ing to make our acquaintance. I am 
known as the Common Red Clover. My 
big brother, the Mammoth, sings bass; 
my little white-headed sister is the so- 
prano; and my oldest sister, Alsike, sings 
alto. Our mission in life is to make farm- 
ers happy by lifting the mortgage off the 
farm and filling the home with joy and 
peace." 

"Why haven't you been here before?" 
asked Job? 

"Because you never invited us. We 
come to you now only because you are an 
old man, broken in heart, if not in health, 



44 CLOVER FARMING. 

with a family about to be broken up un- 
less you mend your ways and become an 
honest man." 

"Honest man," cried Job, "who calls me 
dishonest? Haven't I paid every cent I 
was able to pay and given a mortgage to 
secure the balance? Did I ever leave a 
place with a cent unpaid? Haven't I paid 
debts when I was execution proof, and 
been called a fool for doing it?" 

"Very true," said the speaker. "You 
have been honest with your fellovvmen, 
paid your debts, your taxes and your 
church dues; but you have not been hon- 
est with your land. You have not been 
a thief taking things by stealth, but you 
have been a robber, a soil robber, a pro- 
fessional soil robber all your days. You 
have robbed every farm you ever owned 
until it kicked you out; and if you don't 
repent and be honest with this one, it, too, 
will kick you out and you will die a pau- 
per." 

"But isn't this land mine, subject to the 
mortgage, and can't I do as I please with 
it?" 



THE SOIL ROBBER'S DREAM. 45 

**So is your wife yours, and you know 
you can't impose on her. (That's so,' 
thought Job.) Your son and daughter 
are yours, but you can't wrong them with- 
out getting whipped for it. Your body is 
yours, but you can't do as you please with 
it without being punished. You ha\e 
been robbing this farm every year by sell- 
ing everything off and putting nothing 
back. It has been corn, oats, wheat, flax, 
or corn, wheat, flax, oats every year until 
every furrow complains of Job Barshear's 
dishonesty." 

"Well, what are you folks going to do 
about it? Sing some more, I reckon." 

"Nothing — not even sing — unless you 
ask us to work for you and with you. 
And mind this, Job Barshear, not then, 
unless at the same time you promise to 
work with us honestly/' 

"What can you folks do except sing and 
disturb honest people when they are 
asleep?" 

"Do! Why look here, Job, I can give 
you the nicest fall pasture you ever saw 



46 CLOVER FARMING. 

on a wheat field, and next year a two-ton 
crop of clover hay that will make every 
cow in the yard happy, and a crop of seed 
besides, if the season is right; and the 
year after an extra twenty bushels of corn 
per acre. You have been saying that you 
can't grow hogs like your neighbors, be- 
cause you have no pasture. I can furnish 
you the pasture. If you have no cattle 
yet, my brother here can furnish you a 
seed crop that will help you buy cows 
and sell milk to the creamery; and then 
my time will come to work for you. My 
sister, the alto, can drive the coarse grass 
out of your sloughs, and my little white- 
headed sister can fill up the blue grass 
pastures and fill your hives with honey." 

"That means," said Job, "that I must 
quit this exclusive grain growing and go 
to farming with stock, grass and grain." 

"That is what it means." 

"And that I will have to learn a new 
business and subscribe for farm papers." 

"Yes, Job; it means that you must work 
less and think more; that you must en- 



THE SOU, ROBBER'S DREAM. *. 

courage your son and daughter to think, 
and not work them to death. That is pre- 
cisely what it does mean; and if you don't 
do that very thing, and do it soon, you 
will be a lone hand on a wornout, mort- 
gaged farm that won't be worth much 
more than enough to bury you when you 
die, years before your time." 

And with that Job awoke, and behold, 
it was a dream. 

When he told his dream the next morn- 
ing to the family at the breakfast table, 
young Job said: 

"It is a dream full of meaning, and if 
you will give me a living chance, I will 
make it a reality." 

And he did. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CLOVER BABIES. 

«y]«yf^[ HEN a babe is expected in the 
^^jLI M home, everything possible is 
made ready for it in advance. 
The little mother has been preparing with 
her own hands the wardrobe of materials 
soft and warm, and with every purchase 
of material and stitch of preparation there 
is a thrill of love for the unborn. The 
father shows an unwonted tenderness, 
friends are unusually kind, and even jeal- 
ousies and enmities are stifled, or at least 
suppressed, in view of the unfolding of 
the mystery of a new human life fresh 
from the hand of God. Nature, too, has 
has been preparing in the breast of the 
mother the nourishment essential to the 
new being, and co-operating with human 
love and neighborly sympathy in giving 



THE CLOVER BABIES. 49 

the child the start essential to the fitting 
development of a .lew human being. 

The little clover plants are clover ba- 
bies, and if they are not to perish at the 
very beginning, if they are to grow to the 
profit of the farmer, he must prepare both 
their cradle and their food. If the proper 
cradle has not been prepared by tillage, 
and the proper food be not within easy 
reach, there can not, under any circum- 
stances, be a profitable clover crop. 

Vegetable life is such a common thing 
to the farmer that he seldom stops to con- 
sider, what to him is one of the most im- 
portant of all questions: "How plants 
grow." It may be well for us, therefore, 
before attempting to secure a perfect 
stand so essential to a profitable crop, to 
think at least a little about how plants 
grow in general, and in particular how the 
little clovers get their first start in life. 
In plant life every original plant starts 
from the seed, corresponding to the egg 
in the animal. We say "original;" for 
while we may propagate some plants by 



50 CLOVER FARMING. 

cuttings, the new plants are but branches 
of the old, and not really original or new. 
The perfect seed and the perfect egg are 
alike the results of fertilization. It is 
not necessary for us, in dealing with the 
subject in hand, to go back further than 
the seed. • 

The seed consists of a germ, which is 
the plant in embryo, and a quantity of 
food stored up around it to support it 
during that critical period when it is tak- 
ing root in the soil and establishing con- 
nection with the atmosphere and sunlight 
through its leaves. Let us examine, for 
greater convenience on account of its size, 
a grain of corn. You can easily, with 
your penknife, take out the germ, or chit. 
This is the future corn plant in embryo. 
You perhaps think that the rest of the 
grain was made to feed hogs, or cattle, or 
man. You are mistaken. It was made to 
support the chit, or germ, and make a 
corn plant out of it if it should ever have 
a chance to grow. The eye of the bean 
and potato are similar examples. If the 



THE CLOVER BABIES. 51 

germ of the corn, which is really the fu- 
ture plant, is killed by frost and moisture 
combined, there can be no corn plant de- 
veloped from that grain. 

If seeds are kept perfectly dry, the 
germs will live a long time; in some plants 
longer than in others. It is said that peas 
taken from a mummy, dead three thou- 
sand years, grew when planted. When- 
ever the conditions of growth are fur- 
nished, the plant will attempt to grow 
whether we want it to or not. The first 
condition is moisture. When a seed is 
furnished sufficient moisture it at once 
gets ready to grow, and does grow if two 
other conditions are furnished, namely, 
sufficient heat and a little air. It must 
have all these; not one or two, but all 
three. You may put clover seed in a ma- 
nure pile three or four inches deep and 
tramp it down solid with cattle, or in any 
other way compact the manure firmly 
around it, and it will lie there for years, 
but it will neither grow nor lose its vitali- 
ty. It is waiting. It has the moisture, it 



52 CLOVER FARMING. 

has the heat during the long summer, but 
it is waiting for air. It will not make an- 
other move toward growth until it gets 
air, or more properly speaking, the oxy- 
gen of the air. You may take the same 
kind of seed, place it in a pile on the barn 
floor where it has all the heat and air there 
is, but if ordinarily dry it will not attempt 
to grow. You may give it air and mois- 
ture in the winter, but it will not grow or 
attempt to grow. It is waiting for the 
the heat as well. The clover cradle, or in 
other words, the seed bed, must provide 
for moisture in the soil, air in the soil, heat 
in the soil — all three at the same time. 

These having all been provided, let us 
see how the clover baby gets itself born. 
The first thing it does is to absorb mois- 
ture — to take a good long drink. Some 
seeds require more water, others less, to 
fit them for growth. Clover requires 
a great deal becauie it has a hard shell, 
and some seeds of it have a shell so much 
harder than others that they are not able 
to soak up enough moisture the first sea- 



THE CLOVER BABIES. HJ8 

son, but wait until the second year before 
growing. In this they resemble some- 
what the osage and honey locust seeds 
which require to be soaked in warm water 
before they are planted if they are expect- 
ed to grow the first year. Some weed 
seeds do not seem to grow until the hull 
is accidentally scratched or broken so as 
to allow them to take up sufficient mois- 
ture. 

The water, of which the seed is now full, 
proceeds to dissolve the starch in the 
grain, and thus enables this reserve food 
to move, as required, toward the germ. 
This reserve is of no use whatever to the 
germ unless it can reach it and be taken 
up by it, and it might as well be a mile 
away as the twentieth part of an inch. It 
can reach the germ only by being dis- 
solved in water and flowing to it, and wa- 
ter is the only form in which the germ can 
appropriate plant food. Plants can take 
no solid food, whatever. They live en- 
tirely, so far as their life is from the soil, 
on their drink. 



54 CLOVER FARMING. 

That, however, is not all. The food 
stored up by nature for the use of the clo- 
ver baby is largely in the form of starch. 
The young plant cannot use it in that form, 
but first converts it into grape sugar, or 
glucose. To do this, it is necessary to 
have access to the oxygen of the air. 
Chemically, starch, the main ingredient, 
differs from glucose only in this, that the 
latter has one-fifth more oxygen and one- 
fifth more water than the starch. Heat is 
developed at the same time, as usual, by 
oxidation. This process can be under- 
stood better on a larger scale, as seen in 
the heating of grain in the bin or crib. If 
grain of my kind is not thoroughly dry 
and is placed in a pile where there is suf- 
ficient moisture and air, the process of 
heating begins at once, and if not arrested 
by scattering it about to expel the mois- 
ture, it will in time kill the germ. In this 
case the germ dies because, after starting 
to grow, the moisture to necessary to its 
growth is driven out of the pile by the 
heat developed in the process of oxidation. 



THE CLOVER BABIES 55 

We can readily see the starch converted 
into sugar by watching the maltster at his 
work. He simply provides the barley, 
with which he makes the malt, with heat, 
air and moisture, and waits for it to sprout, 
or attempt to grow. At the proper stage 
he arrests the process, and the starch of 
the barley is found to have been convert- 
ed into glucose or grape sugar. He uses, 
in the manufacture of beer, the sugar that 
nature has made from the starch for the 
purpose of feeding the germ. 

What happens next? Quickening hav- 
ing begun, the seeds swelled, as we say, 
the food for the infant plant having been 
prepared by converting the dry substance 
of the seeds into fluids, which serve the 
same purpose for the plant as its mother's 
milk for the little babe, the germ throws 
out first a root which strikes down into 
the soil — never up toward the air — and 
soon after a shoot, which botanists term a 
"plumule," to be developed into a stalk, 
which strikes out at once for the air and 
sunlight, and never under any circurn- 



56 CLOVER FARMING. 

stances strikes down into the soil. No 
difference how you may turn the seed, 
even if, as in the case of the clover, squash, 
and many other plants, the part that goes 
upward is the body of the seed itself, it 
never strikes down, but laboriously and 
apparently with great effort, turns itself 
so as to reach upward. Have plants in- 
stincts like animals or babies? Have they 
a sort of intelligence? We sometimes 
think so. 

This clover baby is all its life to be a 
plant that lives in two worlds — feeds in 
two different pastures, drawing part of its 
nutriment from the air above and part 
from the soil below. It catches on to the 
soil a little the first, but loses no time in 
getting established in the air pasture as 
well. From the soil it draws moisture, 
ash, some of its nitrogen, and carbon, but 
it obtains the great bulk of its dry matter 
from the air. 

Dry reading, you say? Yes, for the man 
who does not think and is not interested 
in the wonderful processes constantly go- 



THE CLOVER BABIES. 57 

Ing on around him. But what has all this 
to do with getting those clover babies 
started? Everything, my friend; and the 
main reason why you have failed in the 
past in getting a stand of clover, if such 
be the burden of your song, is because 
you have not known, or would not know, 
these simple things I have been trying to 
tell you. 

Remember what I have said about the 
three essentials to the growth of plants — 
moisture, heat, and air — not one or two, 
but all three and at the same time. Any 
one can get a stand of clover in any year 
if nature will supply these three condi- 
tions; if she will keep the soil wet enough 
and not too wet, long enough for the clo- 
ver to get the first root down far enough 
to be sure of water enough. That is all 
that is needed. The season furnishes the 
heat, and there is always air enough un- 
less shut out by very deep covering. Un- 
der these conditions any one can secure a 
stand of clover. These, however, are not 



58 CLOVER FARMING. 

the conditions usually furnished on the 
farm. 

Clover is often sown in the spring of 
the year on winter wheat or rye. If the 
soil has a good deal of clay and is full of 
water, and there is much freezing and 
thawing, the seed absorbs sufficient mois- 
ture and secures sufficient covering; and 
when the spring furnishes the heat, it 
grows and thrives. If, on the other hand, 
the soil is alluvial, or the light drift soils 
of a new prairie country, in the freezing 
and thawing much of the seed may fail of 
cover, and if there is not abundance of 
moisture it may refuse to grow; or if it 
starts it may perish for lack of moisture, 
and the farmer will then complain of bad 
luck in securing a stand. There is no bad 
luck about it. It is simply bad manage- 
ment. The seed did not have enough 
moisture. It was the farmer's place to 
see that it had. If he had noticed that 
his soil was dry in March, and that there- 
fore, no matter what the changes in tem- 
perature, there could not be much expan- 



THE CLOVER BABIES. '59 

sion and contraction, he should have wait- 
ed until his ground was fit to harrow, then 
sown his seed and covered it deep enough 
to get moisture. The clover seed must 

HAVE MOISTURE AND A GREAT DEAL OF IT. 

He expected nature to work a miracle for 
him and she refused. That is all. 

"My father back east sowed it that way 
and never failed," says the so-called prac- 
tical farmer. But your father had clay 
land and March was usually a wet month. 
Clay soil holds water better than lighter 
soils, and especially those of the Missouri 
Valley. This clay soil filled with moisture 
expands and contracts. Many of the 
prairie soils have but little expansion and 
contraction during changes from heat to 
cold, or vice versa, and sandy lands 
scarcely any. Your father was wise; you 
are unwise. Remember, you must fur- 
nish the clover seed with abundant' mois- 
ture or it will not grow. If there is not 
enough moisture on the surface (which 
there is only in certain years) you must 
cover it. It is your business to know 



60 CLOVER FARMING. 

when it has sufficient moisture. If you 
do not, you cannot expect to grow clover. 
You must not guess at it, or calculate: 
you must know. 

Clover seed is often sown with spring 
grain on the surface after the harrow, and 
with no covering except the subsequent 
settling of the soil. If the soil is quite 
moist, light showers follow for a few days, 
and no crust is formed, it will absorb suf- 
ficient moisture to grow. This again hap- 
pens only in certain seasons, and when it 
does not, clover either fails or there is a 
partial stand almost as bad as none. 
Again it is charged to luck, and again 
there is no one to blame but the farmer 
himself. 

"I was afraid of getting the seed too 
deep," says the farmer who takes some 
cheap agricultural paper edited with the 
scissors and paste pot, "and my paper 
says that clover seed will not grow if cov- 
ered more than a quarter of an inch deep." 

Nonsense! It is not a question of depth 
but of moisture. If the first quarter of an 



THE CLOVER BABIES. 61 

inch will not furnish the moisture needed, 
then he must get it down deep enough to 
reach sufficient moisture. Clover will 
grow on a light, loose soil in a dry season 
even if i* be three inches deep. How 
much deeper a covering it will stand, we 
do not know; but in ordinary lands and 
seasons clover covered plow deep, say 
four or five inches, will not grow. The 
baby clover can be born with a quarter of 
an inch covering, or with none at all, if it 
has the moisture to dissolve the food 
which nature has stored up for the sup- 
port of the germ during the critical period 
of transformation from the seed to the 
perfect plant. In climates like Scotland, 
where this quarter of an inch notion start- 
ed, there is usually sufficient moisture at 
that depth. When the soil is thoroughly 
saturated in any country several days con- 
tinuously, clover seed needs no covering 
at all. The lighter the soil the more cov- 
ering is required. The drier the season 
the deeper must be the covering. 

"But does not clover seed itself in the 



62 CLOVER FARMING. 

meadow and come up without any cover- 
ing whatever? Then why cover it in the 
plowed field?" 

Certainly it does. Nature, however, 
sows a dozen or more seeds in this way, 
and perhaps one grows. She always sows 
ten, possibly a hundred, often a thousand 
seeds where she expects but one to sur- 
vive. Notice, please, how she reseeds 
this clover meadow. She sows the seed 
in the chaff, which at once protects it, 
absorbs moisture and retains it for the 
future use of the germ. She sows in the 
fall and the seed has all winter to soak 
itself up. Stock of various kinds graze 
on the pasture and tramp the seed into 
the earth, compressing the soil around it. 
The freezing of the seed fits it all the bet- 
ter for absorbing moisture. It thus gets 
sufficient moisture, is soaked up all win- 
ter, and when it is warm enough in the 
spring it grows, of course. If you will 
sow the seed in the chaff in the fall of the 
year on a field of rye and pasture the crop 
with calves, pigs, or sheep, you will have 
a stand without fail. 



THE CLOVER BABIES. 63 

The above remarks apply particularly 
to the red and mammoth clovers. Alsike 
is usually sown on wet lands where mois- 
ture is abundant, and seldom needs cov- 
ering. The white clover is self-seeded, 
but where seeded as the red and mam- 
moth are, it must, like them, have suf- 
ficient covering to secure moisture. 

I have dwelt long on this point, and 
intentionally, because a large per cent, of 
the failures in securing a stand of clover 
are the result of not being acquainted with 
this one simple fact — that clover will not 
grow under any conditions unless it has 
enough moisture to thoroughly saturate 
the seed and keep it saturated until the 
starch can be dissolved and converted into 
sugar, or in other words, transformed by 
the mysterious chemical processes of na- 
ture into plant milk. Where abundant 
and continuous rains do not furnish this 
moisture, we must furnish it, and that is 
the end of it; and the only way practica- 
ble is by planting it deep enough in the 
ground to secure this moisture by absorp- 
tion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HOW THE CLOVER BABIES GROW. 

♦JT N THE last chapter I endeavored to 
explain in as plain and simple lan- 
guage as possible, how the young 
clover plants are born and what must take 
place in the seed before there can be ger- 
mination, or the development of life. Life 
is in the germ but it can be developed 
only by the combination of moisture, heat 
and air — all three, and not any one or two 
of these. To secure moisture and thus 
transform the starch into sugar and start 
the life forces going, the seed must be 
placed a sufficient depth in the soil, 
whether that be a quarter of an inch or 
three inches, and the farmer must supply 
this moisture or have bad luck with his 
stand of clover. Inasmuch as many farm- 
ers secure a stand but fail to hold it, I 



HOW THE CLOVER BABIES GROW. 65 

will endeavor in this chapter to point out 
under what conditions, where the stand is 
once secured, it can be held in ordinary 
years. 

The young plant, as heretofore stated, 
feeds in two pastures — the atmosphere 
and the soil. From the atmosphere it ob- 
tains carbon only, with which it builds up 
the carbohydrates of the plants — the 
starch, gum, sugar and cellular tissues. 
From the soil it receives, through the me- 
dium of the roots, the water and the min- 
eral elements, and from the air in the soil, 
by means of the microbes on its roots, the 
clovers receive, in addition, the great bulk 
of their nitrogen. The rest of the nitro- 
gen, with some of the carbon, comes, like 
the mineral elements, by way of the roots. 

The plant leceives its carbon from the 
atmosphere through innumerable mouths, 
or what the botanists call "stomata" (Latin 
for mouths) located on the under side of 
the leaves, and it is estimated that there 
are often as many as a hundred thousand 
on the under side of a single leaf, for ex- 



66 CLOVE R FARMING. 

ample, of the oak. In dry times the plant 
has the power of contracting these mouths 
so as to shut off evaporation. The effects 
of the contraction may be seen in the ci_' >- 
ing up of the leaves of the corn in hot, 
dry weather. 

The plant, by a chemistry of its own, 
dissolves the carbonic acid, which is a 
compound of carbon and oxygen, uses 
the carbon, in connection with the mineral 
and nitrogenous elements, in building up 
its structure, and exhales, or throws back, 
the oxygen to the air. The animal, it 
will be observed, breathes air and uses the 
oxygen of it for the purification of the 
blood, and exhales, or throws off, carbonic 
acid; hence, plants and animals are each 
necessary to the health of the other. 
Without the plant, the atmosphere in time 
would become loaded with poison; with- 
out the animal the supply of carbonic acid 
would in time be exhausted and plant life 
would perish. 

The plant feeds in the other pasture in 
an entirely different way. There are no 



HOW THE CLOVER BABIES GROW. 6? 

stomata, or mouths, in the roots, never- 
the ess the plant receives its food prima- 
rily from the soil through the parts of the 
root that correspond to the leaves. In 
clovers, the tap root corresponds to the 
stem, the lateral or branch roots to the 
branches, and the root hairs, the extremi- 
ties of which are often microscopic or 
invisible to the naked eye, correspond to 
the leaves. The roots, as well as the stalk, 
branches, and leaves, are made up of cells, 
and the growth of the root is simply its 
elongation by the addition of cells to the 
end or sides. In some plants, as, for ex- 
ample, quack grass, these cells are made 
up of a very hard substance, and form a 
kind of cap, which can penetrate even a 
hard clod. This and other weeds have 
roots which enable them to exist under 
almost any conditions. It is entirely dif- 
ferent with the cultivation of plants. 
These root hairs, which are simply elon- 
gated cells, take up the moisture from the 
soil by absorption, carry it between the 
larger cells into the larger roots, and from 



68 CLOVER FARMING 

these it passes up through the body of 
the tree, or stalk, and out through the 
leaves. It carries in solution the plant 
food in the soil which the plant uses for 
its growth and development, and finally, 
for the perfecting of the grain. 

It is a remarkable fact that the cell 
structure of the root when it comes in 
contact with the minute particles of soil, 
is able to take from them the potash, 
phosphoric acid, sulphur, chlorine, lime, 
silica, and whatever else is needed by the 
plant, even when these substances are in- 
soluble in pure water. Some plants have 
a greater power in this direction than 
others, For example, the clover root 
hairs will take potash and phosphoricacid 
out of soils where the grain rootlets and 
root hairs, such as of wheat, oats and ryt 
cannot find them; and one of the great 
benefits of clover is that, once wrung out 
of the rocky elements of the soil and used 
in the clover plant, the potash and phos- 
phoric acid, as well as nitrogen, are in 
such shape to be available in the future 



HOW THE CLOVER BABIES GROW. 69 

for other grains and grasses. Wheat, on 
the other hand, will take up a large 
amount of silica, which the clover either 
will not take, or refuses, the reason being 
that the wheat needs it for the support of 
the stalk and the clover does not. It is 
supposed that the plant is able to dissolve 
this otherwise insoluble matter by means 
of a certain acid secretion peculiar to its 
root cells and root hairs. 

The reader will see at once that if these 
baby clovers are to grow, they must be 
given every chance for the extension of 
the root system, or the rapid addition of 
cells to their extremities. In order that 
this development may take place, the soil 
must be thoroughly pulverized; in other 
words, there must be a fine seed bed pre- 
pared. They cannot develop among hard 
clods, nor if there are vacant spaces full 
of air where the clover cells can not be in 
touch with the minute particles of soil. 
This, we take it, is the reason why so 
many stands of clover, seemingly excel- 
lent, disappear. The table for the plants, 



70 CLOVER FARMING. 

the pasture, the feeding ground, in other 
words, the seed bed, has not been proper- 
ly prepared. Fortunately, the seed bed 
most appropriate for winter wheat, rye, or 
any of the spring grains, is the one best 
adapted to the clover plant. Fall wheat 
is, in normal seasons, quite a certain crop 
in wheat sections, provided the ground 
has been plowed early, harrowed thor- 
oughly, thus forming close connection be- 
tween the furrow and the subsoil, and 
compacted together, when dry. so as to 
give every opportunity for capillar)' con- 
nection, or the pumping up of the water 
from below. Clover, properly covered, 
the following spring on a seed bed thus 
prepared, is, barring drouths and untime- 
ly frosts, a reasonably sure stand. When 
the clovers are sown with spring grain on 
corn stalk land that has been thoroughly 
cultivated the year before, a good starrd, 
under conditions otherwise favorable, is 
reasonably certain, provided a proper seed 
bed has been prepared for the spring grain 
and the clovers have had sufficient cover 
ing. 



HOW THE CLOVER BABIES GROW. 71 

There is, however, another matter to be 
considered. If an abundance of moisture 
is essential to the germination of clover 
seed, it is likewise quite essential to its 
development through its entire career, and 
the main difficulty in holding a stand of 
clover after it has been secured, is a lack 
of sufficient water for both the nurse crop 
and the clovers. This, in fact, I regard as 
the greatest of all difficulties in clover 
growing. It requires about five hundred 
pounds of water to carry in solution the 
materials needed for a pound of the dry 
matter of oats (including both stalk and 
grain), about four hundred pounds for a 
pound of clover hay, and about the same 
amount for wheat and barley, all calculat- 
ed as dry matter which is about twelve 
per cent, less than when in ordinary con- 
dition. The reader will see at once that 
if a good stand of young clover is to be 
maintained and a heavy crop of oats 
grown, there must be a very large supply 
of water in the soil. When oats is the 
nurse crop, being the stronger, it will help 



72 CLOVER FARMING. 

itself to water first, and this explains why 
young clover in an oats field seems to 
content itself with holding its ground and 
making but little growth before harvest. 
Unfortunately, the hot sun, following the 
removal of the shade, will often work sad 
havoc with the tender plants not yet 
emerged from babyhood. 

This fact emphasizes the importance of 
the thorough preparation of the seed bed, 
with the primary object of securing a con- 
tinuous flow of water from the subsoil 
through the plant; and explains, also, 
why, when corn stalks are turned under 
and oats and clover then sown, the results 
are not nearly so good as when the clover 
and oats, or other grains, are sown on the 
stalks and properly disked or cultivated 
in. The cultivation of the corn the year 
before has established perfect connection 
between the soil and subsoil, while the 
cultivation in connection with seeding has 
prepared the mulch of dry dirt which, to 
a large extent, shuts off surface evapora- 
tion and thus enables the plant to utilize 



HOW THE CLOVEE BABIES GROW. 73 

the full supply of water. The unusual 
growth made by spring grains that are 
sown in drills and cultivated until several 
inches high, is due to the fact that this 
surface mulch is continued during a con- 
siderable period of growth, thus giving the 
plant a much larger supply of water than 
it has under ordinary circumstances. 

It may be proper in this connection to 
say something about the value of nurse 
crops. It may be stated as a general prin- 
ciple, that nurse crops never, under any 
circumstances, do the clover plants any 
good whatever. Clover sown alone in the 
spring and given the full use of the land, 
makes several times the growth, up to 
July, usually made by that sown with 
nurse crops. There are two objections, 
however, to dispensing with a nurse crop 
in sections that have an abundant water, 
supply during March, April, May and 
June. The first is, that to dispense with a 
a nurse crop is to dispense with a year's 
use of the land. This is not strictly true, 
however, for the reason that had the clo- 



?4 CLOVER FARMING. 

vers the full use of the land, they would 
produce a much greater amount of forage 
than can be grown with any nurse crop 
whatever. The second is, that the nurse 
crop keeps down the growth of weeds 
which ♦vould seriously interfere with the 
young clovers and would have to be kept 
down some other way. Clovers being 
sown early in the spring, do not afford the 
opportunity which the corn crop does to 
sprout the weeds and then kill them; 
hence, the only resort is the mower, which 
should be used to cut down the first crop 
and give the clovers a chance tc heac 1 
them offin the next race. 

Whether to sow a nurse crop for the 
baby clovers is a question mainly of the 
supply of moisture. I am satisfied that 
the clover country could be extended at 
least a hundred miles west of the present 
western limit, provided, first, a thorough 
seed bed were prepared, and second, that 
the clovers were allowed the full use of 
the soil the first year. Had I land a hun- 
dred miles west of the present clover belt 



EOW THE CLOVER BABIES GROW. 75 

I would undertake with a good deal of 
confidence to grow it, but would first pre- 
pare an ideal seed bed by removing the 
corn stalks and burning them, disking two 
or three inches deep, then harrow thor- 
oughly, and give the clover the full use of 
the land. If this failed, having prepared 
the seed bed, I would drill it in as we do 
wheat, and then prepare a harrow made 
of ten-inch wire nails and light frames 
with which I would harrow the spaces be- 
tween until the clover became established. 
Thorough treatment of this kind on a few 
farms would show the falsity of the state- 
ment heard in almost every township in 
advance of clover culture, from Illinois to 
western Kansas and Nebraska; "This 
country will not grow clover." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER MEADOW. 

^Y° C0NVERT a field of rank clover 
^^, with the middle head of each stalk 
just turning brown and the other 
two in full bloom, into sweet and perfectly 
cured clover hay, is one of the most diffi- 
cult and delicate operations of the farm, 
and one that requires the farmer to have 
all his wits about him, in active exercise, 
with the proper tools ready and in com- 
plete order. The problem at first sight 
seems to be a simple one, namely, to let 
the leaves pump all the surplus water out 
of the stalk and leave all the substance in 
it. That is absolutely all there is in mak- 
ing clover hay. Simple, isn't it? Like a 
a good many other things, it is easier to 
tell what is to be done than to do it, and 
a good deal easier to tell how to do it 



THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER MEADOW. 77 

than to do it yourself. It is quite easy to 
get all the water out — time will do that — 
but to get rid of this surplus water and at 
the same time retain all the nutrition of 
the clover when in its very best condition, 
is quite another and a much more difficult 
operation. 

In previous chapters I have explained 
the continuous circulation of water from 
the root hairs through the larger roots 
and stalk, or stem, and out into the at- 
mosphere through the leaves; a constant 
flow, if we could but see it, in which there 
are four hundred pounds of water evapor- 
ated for every pound of dry matter re- 
tained and used in building up the stalk 
and leaves of the clover plant. Making 
clover hay is simply arresting the flow 
from the root by severing the stalk with 
the mower and allowing the leaves to 
pump out, before they die, the great bulk 
of the water, or sap, remaining in the stalk 
at the time it is cut down. When the clo- 
ver plant is at its best, in other words has 
the most nutrition in the form most easily 



78 CLOVER FARMING. 

and completely digested, that is, when the 
bloom is as full as possible, by which time 
the first of the three heads of the stalk 
will be turned brown, the plant contains 
about seventy-five per cent, of its weight 
in water. When this same clover is suf- 
ficiently cured to go into the barn with 
safety, it contains about twenty per cent, 
of water, four or five per cent, of which is 
lost by "going through the sweat" in the 
mow or barn, so that clover hay, when 
finally cured, contains from twelve to fif- 
teen per cent, of water. The problem of 
curing clover, therefore, is to evaporate 
about fifty-five per cent, of its weight in 
the- form of water as quickly as it can be 
done. The natural passage of water from 
the plant is through the pores of the 
leaves and not through the stem. The 
nice point in the management is, there- 
fore, to evaporate this water before the 
leaf structure is destroyed by the heat 
of the sun. The farmer who knows how 
to do this has mastered the secret of the 
clover meadow. We could all make ele- 



THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER MEADOW. 79 

gant clover hay if we could handle it the 
way our good wives handle herbs for med- 
icine — by cutting it off, tying in bunches, 
and hanging in the shade. It would then 
have all its sweetness and feeding quali- 
ties and much of its bloom, and by giving 
the cow plenty of good water she would 
make as good returns from it in the win- 
ter as she would if she cropped it from 
the field. The farmer's work in the mead- 
ow must be done in the open air, in un- 
certain weather, on a large scale, and with 
the minimum of expense. He must de- 
pend on the sun and wind to evaporate this 
surplus water, and the problem is how to 
arrange the work so as to avoid the dam- 
age that comes from rain and dew, and to 
utilize to the best advantage the sunshine 
and the wind. Given a ten-acre field only, 
a good barn, and a tedder in addition to 
the usual hay-making machinery, and it is 
not hard at all. He could then wait until 
the middle head is turning brown and the 
bloom complete. He could start the 
mower in the evening and cut down 



60 CLOVER frARMIttS. 

enough for the next day's operations. A 
shower, or a heavy rain, even if it lasted a 
a day or two, would not hurt this newly 
mown clover, because the structure of the 
the leaf has not yet been impaired and the 
stalk has not lost its suppleness. Had he 
commenced in the morning, and the clo- 
ver become wilted and rain followed, the 
hay would have been damaged to start 
with and it would have been impossible to 
dry it out the next day without more 
damage. In the morning, if the day be 
fine, he could start the tedder, using a 
rapid walking team, or, if he did not have 
a tedder he could turn the swath in the 
old-fashioned way. It is astonishing how 
rapidly the leaves evaporate the moisture, 
especially if there be a breeze from the 
north or northwest, as the air is then dry 
and hungry for moisture. It is quite dif- 
ferent when the wind is from the south or 
cast, and therefore moisture laden. By 
noon he could do one of two things; put 
the hay in the barn, or if the conditions 
were unfavorable, he could put it in cocks 



THE SECRET OE THE CLOVER MEADOW. 

and cover them with hay caps made out 
of duck or oil muslin and pinned to the 
earth at the corners. He could go. on 
with his cutting and cocking and let it 
stand for a week or longer; then, when 
circumstances were favorable, open out 
the cocks and fill the barn up with first- 
class clover hay. 

This is all right for the Eastern farmer. 
The Western farmer, however, usually has 
forty, eighty, or perhaps hundreds of acres 
of clover to cut. When cured it has often 
less than one-half of its selling value on 
the Eastern farm, and must, therefore, t?e 
made at the minimum of expense. Be- 
sides, he is in a country where strong 
winds with soaking rains are not uncom- 
mon in the very midst of the haying sea- 
son. Hay in the cock, unless quite green, 
is then in a very precarious situation be- 
cause if once thoroughly soaked, it is 
hopelessly damaged and is scarcely worth 
the labor that it takes to shake it out and 
cure it. The Western farmer who has a 
large amount of ha)' to cure, cannot afford 



82 CLOVER FARMING. 

to wait, if he wishes the very best quality 
of hay attainable, until the middle head of 
the stalk has turned brown. He is obliged 
to begin, if the condition of the cornfield 
will permit, a little too soon; for even then 
he will be too late in finishing. In short, 
he must begin as soon as possible, push 
things as fast as possible, and will, under 
any circumstances, have some inferior hay 
at the last, because the clover has become 
too ripe. 

In harvesting these large fields he 
should cut as much hay as possible in the 
afternoon, and as late in the afternoon as 
ha can. He should aim to put as little as 
possible in cock, not more, as a rule, than 
he can cover. He should aim by the use 
of the tedder, or some form of hay rake 
w h'ch would make very small windrows, to 
secure as complete a shaking up, or turn- 
ing of the hay as possible, so as to expose 
it as fully as he can to the action of the 
sun and wind, and then, as soon as a sam- 
ple bunch tightly twisted in the hand shows 
no moisture on the outside of the stalk, get 



THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER MEADOW. 83 

it into the barn. Hay can be put in the 
barn or stack with safety a great deal 
greener than most farmers suppose, pro- 
vided it has no moisture except the sap 
in the stalk. Farmers are often greatly 
surprised at the difference between the 
action of the sap, or water in the stalk, 
and water that falls on the outside, either 
in the form of rain or dew. The reason 
is not hard to find. The air is always filled 
in the summer season with spores, or mi- 
nute forms of vegetable life, which devel- 
ope into molds, mildews, and such like. 
These are brought down and deposited on 
the clover by rain, and with moisture and 
summer heat, at once start up the heating, 
or fermenting process, which speedily 
ends, if not interrupted, with the destruc- 
tion of the hay or grass. The sap is en- 
tirely free from all this. It carries no 
spores with it, hence does little damage 
as compared with dew or rain. It is quite 
true that hay can be put in the barn en- 
tirely too green, and especially if the 
weather is sultry, the atmosphere muggy, 



84 CLOVER FARMING. 

or in short, heavily laden with moisture. 
Under these circumstances, hay is never 
so dry as it seems to be, and there is dan- 
ger of mold; if there be wet bunches 
through lack of sufficient stirring, there 
is danger of decay, and at certain seasons 
and under certain conditions, danger of 
spontaneous combustion. Under these 
circumstances it is a wise thing to have a 
stack of straw handy, and if hay is put in 
too green, cover the mow, or stack, with 
six inches of dry straw. This will absorb 
the surplus moisture, and at least lessen 
the danger.- 

The more clover is shaken up, either 
with a tedder or rake, and the more com- 
pletely the lowe*r parts of the swath are 
exposed to the air shortly after cutting, 
the better. The less it is handled after 
once dry, or nearly so, the better. The 
great point is to secure, by free exposure 
to sun and wind, the evaporation of the 
sap in the stalk through its natural route, 
the leaf, before the leaf structure is de- 
stroyed. After the leaf structure is de- 



THE SECRET OP THE CLOVER MEADOW. 85 

stroyed and the stalk still moisture-laden, 
it is impossible to make good hay. We 
st/ongly recommend the use of the tedder. 
Where the tedder is not used, the side de- 
livery rake, making small windrows, is the 
next best thing, and where a large acre- 
age is to be handled, one of the most prac- 
ticable and available implements. Any 
implement which will, in the process of 
curing, expose the clover to the free ac- 
tion of the sun and wind, is invaluable to 
the farmer who has a large acreage of clo- 
ver to cure and wishes to secure it in the 
best condition. 

Thus far I have spoken of first-class 
clover hay cut from a heavy crop when 
one-third of the heads are turned brown. 
There is however, very little of this kind 
of hay made in the West. Most farmers 
prefer to let the clover stand until the 
heads are nearly all turned brown. It is, 
they say, much easier to cure. So it is. 
But it is poor hay at best, and if once wet, 
especially in sultry, muggy weather, very 
poor stuff, indeed. The sap has been 



86 CLOVER FARMING. 

evaporated through the leaves, it is true, 
but much that would have been digestible 
cut in due season, has been converted 
into cellular tissue, or, in plain English, 
indigestible woody fiber. Most of the 
leaves are dead and crumble when handled, 
and thus the best part of the hay is gone 
— past redemption. It is simply a ques- 
tion whether the man who has taken the 
trouble to grow a fine crop of clover will 
go to a little more expense in the way of 
suitable machinery, hay sheds, and utilize 
the gray matter of his brain and get all 
there is in the crop, or compel his live 
stock to put up with very poor clover hay 
to their great lack of thrift and his lack 
of profit. Whether he will or no, the farm- 
er must do one thing or the other. He 
cannot have first-class clover hay if he 
allows a large per cent, of the substance 
of the plant to pass into woody fiber. It 
is then valuable merely for "filling" in com- 
bination with some condensed feed, „ as, 
for instance, corn. A late cut clover crop 
is a poor crop always. Clover hay thor- 



THE SECRET OP THE CLOVER MEADOW. 87 

oughly soaked after being partially dried, 
has very little value. Clover hay so 
dry that the leaves rattle and crumble on 
the hayrack is only a part of a crop and a 
poor part, at that. The best of it has been 
lost and the rest is largely indigestible. 
I am well aware that these losses can 
not always be avoided, for the farmer can 
not control the weather. It is, besides, 
often a choice between neglecting his corn 
or his clover, and nine farmers out of ten 
will neglect the clover, because the longer 
it stands the easier it is to get it in the mow 
or stack. We can not always do what we 
know to be right, or the best thing; never- 
theless the laws governing the making of 
the best clover hay are as immutable as 
the laws of righteousness, and nature will 
work for us no miracles. She will go on 
converting digestible matter into woody 
fiber — indigestible stuff — whether we are 
ready to mow or not, and whether the 
weather be fair or foul. She will not wait 
to allow us to finish working the corr, or 
to go to the Fourth of July celebration. 



88 CLOVEB FARMING. 

She has provided a way for getting the 
sap out of newly cut clover with wonder- 
ful rapidity. If we work with her by us- 
ing a tedder, or a horse rake that serves 
the same purpose, she works for us with a 
will and with efficiency. If not, she con- 
tinues to work right along and against us. 
She has endowed the clover plant with a 
wonderful capacity for absorbing mois- 
ture from the atmosphere, and if we con- 
tinue to haul in clover after dark when it 
handles heavy on the fork, we may as well 
look out. We will need dry straw on the 
top of that load. If we allow partially 
dried hay to get soaked with rain, millions 
of fungi spring into activity in the sum- 
mer heat and moisture, and nature w-ill 
not work a miracle for us because we are 
good citizens or good Christians. 

"Hear now the conclusion of the whole 
matter." Have everything ready for hay- 
making when the middle heads are turned 
brown. Start the mower in the middle of 
the afternoon, the tedder, or some substi- 
tute for it the next morning; have the 



THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER MEADOW 89 

hay-shed or barn ready; keep everything 
moving; watch the clouds, and as soon as 
a load of hay is dry enough, get it into 
the barn. If the weather is uncertain, go 
slow. Clover cut too late is better than 
than clover spoiled in the making. If a 
shower comes don't be afraid to start the 
mower any time in the day. Rain does 
not hurt green clover, neither does tedding 
or shaking it in any other way. Don't 
trust the boys or the hired hand to run the 
clover-making without your supervision. 
Boss the job yourself, and always with 
brains. Quick, active work for an hour, 
guided by a clear head, will often save a 
nice, lot of good clover hay, while the de- 
lay of prompt action,, even for an hour, 
sometimes brings with it heavy losses. 
Keep the idea clearly in mind that you 
must enable the leaves to evaporate the 
sap from the stalk before they are entire- 
ly dead. Sunburnt clover hay, the leaves 
black and the stalk green, is about the 
poorest stuff that can be put into the barn. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ALFALFA. 

^^^HERE is a large section of the 
^ 1^ United States in which the clovers 
heretofore mentioned cannot be 
grown at a profit, for example, in many 
sections of the Southern states outside of 
the carboniferous formation, or made soils 
carrying carboniferous matter. Here they 
often fail for lack of the proper mineral 
elements in the soil. They fail on much 
of the Pacific slope where the long sum- 
mer drouths are fatal, and also in much of 
that vast region stretching between the 
Missouri river and the mountains, where 
they may grow one year to perfection and 
fail for three or four for lack of suflficient 
moisture, to say nothing of the deserts 
beyond where, without irrigation only the 
sparse and native herbage can exist. The 



ALFALFA. 91 

clovers have also a northern limit as yet 
undefined. 

Their place is taken in the South by the 
so-called Japan clover (Lespedeza striata) 
a cousin of the clovers, suitable only for 
pasture, but invaluable in restoring fertil- 
ity to lands worn out by continuous cotton 
growing — on the Pacific slope by two or 
three varieties of burr clover, belonging 
to the same sub-family (Medicago) as 
the sweet clover of the North, and all 
having the same remarkable faculty of en- 
riching land by storing it with the nitro- 
gen of the atmosphere. 

The most valuable, however, of these 
clover-like plants is lucerne (Medicago 
sativa), (taking its name from the city of 
Lucerne, Switzerland, where it is culti- 
vated largely) or alfalfa, an Arabic word 
adopted by the Spaniards and which has 
been accepted by the farmers of the United 
States. 

In its origin it antedates history. It 
has been traced back to the ancient king- 
doms of Media and Persia, and we have 



92 CLOVER FARMING. 

no doubt that when Nebuchednezzar was 
testing the value, on Daniel and his com- 
panions, of the legumes or "pulse" as food 
for young statesmen, alfalfa was growing 
luxuriantly on the royal farms on the 
banks of the rivers of Babylon. It was 
brought to Greece during the Persian war 
about 470 B. C, thence to Italy; and it 
naturally followed the march of the all- 
conquering legions of Rome to France, 
Spain and Portugal. The Spaniards 
brought it with their armies to the New 
World, and it soon became established 
along the La Plata and Chili in South 
America, whence it was brought to Cali- 
fornia. Its very great value under irriga- 
tion having been recognized, it soon be- 
came established on the Pacific coast, in 
the mountain valleys, and on the plains. 
It will be seen from the above that its 
original home is in hot countries where 
the soil is susceptible of irrigation. The 
growing plant has been accustomed for 
thousands of years to being soaked with 



ALFALFA. 93 

water, air warm, every six weeks or two 
months between cuttings during the grow- 
ing season, and to dry, hot weather. It 
has, * therefore, developed a wonderful 
length and thickness of root in proportion 
to top, the latter attaining, generally, not 
more than two feet in length, or three feet 
in exceptionally rich land, the separate- 
stalks not thicker than those of mammoth 
clover, while the root may be of any length 
from two to twenty feet, according to the 
necessity of supplying itself with water by 
reaching permanent moisture, and often 
half an inch or more in thickness. It 
grows rapidly during the growing season, 
after every cutting, the time between the 
cuttings being measured by the supply of 
water and heat, this determining the length 
of the stalk before beginning to bloom, 
for when it begins to bloom it ceases to 
grow. In order to have as little woody 
fiber as possible, it should be cut as soon 
as it fairly begins to bloom, except when 
a seed crop is desired, and this should be 
the last crop of the season, the crude fiber 



94 CLOVER FARMING. 

increasing very rapidly after the bloom- 
ing period begins, and the second and 
third cuttings showing much more of this 
comparatively indigestible material than 
the first. 

It will easily be seen, therefore, that in 
undertaking to cultivate alfalfa outside of 
the districts where irrigation is practiced, 
or sub-irrigation is natural, we are dealing 
with a plant differing widely from any 
other in common use as forage, and one 
that is not likely to adapt itself readily to 
new conditions. A failure to recognize 
the wide difference between the habits of 
the alfalfa and other clovers, or clover- 
like plants used for the same purpose on 
the farm, is responsible for much of the 
lack of success in attempts to substitute 
it for the red or mammoth clovers. To 
begin with, desert soils requiring irriga- 
tion (on which alfalfa has been for the 
most part grown for a period antedating 
history) are generally porous to a great 
depth. They generally have in them all 
the elements of clay, and in fact under 



ALFALFA. 05 

Irrigation are liable to develop clay beds, 
and after some years to require drainage. 
The alfalfa, therefore, has in these soils 
every opportunity to send its roots down 
to any desired depth. Any attempt, 
therefore, to grow alfalfa on land under- 
laid with rock, very coarse gravel or hard- 
pan must result in failure. In alfalfa grow- 
ing a subsoil which the roots can penetrate 
easily without being diverted or forced to 
a horizontal course is essential to success. 
Again, alfalfa has for ages been accus- 
tomed to a wet surface only for the brief 
time necessary for irrigation, and this in 
countries where there is a high tempera- 
ture at this period of the year. It is not 
accustomed to a wet soil, alternately freez- 
ing and thawing during the month of 
March, and hence it is very likely to die 
out in the spring, even on soils where it 
has flourished for one or two years. 

Again, alfalfa has been used for ages as 
a meadow plant, or for soiling purposes, 
and it is not to be expected to adapt itself 
readily to pastures, at least at the first 



96 CLOVER FARMING. 

Prants frequently, and perhaps always, 
more or less adapt themselves to the sit- 
uation when placed in new and strange 
conditions, and it is possible that in the 
course of time varieties of alfalfa will be 
developed which may be suitable for pas- 
turage. There is a very considerable 
variation often, even now, in the size and 
color of the leaves, stems and flowers. 
Some varieties when brought from foreign 
countries, seem to lose their characteristic 
differences heretofore developed, when 
grown on the same soils in the United 
States; while others, and especially those 
from Central Asia, seem to retain their 
peculiarities of habit and growth. It is, 
therefore probable, we think, that in time 
we shall have varieties of alfalfa better 
adapted to the wants of the farmer in sec- 
tions of the country where irrigation is 
not possible, and where something is de- 
manded to take the place of clover. 

It must not be forgotten, when consid- 
ering the propriety of growing alfalfa, 
that it does not adapt itself to the rotation 



ALFALFA. 97 

in use on farms in the clover countries. 
\s will be shown presently, it is not very 
easy to secure a stand without irrigation, 
direct or indirect, nor should much be ex- 
pected of it for a year, even when given 
the full use of the land. When once es- 
tablished, the stand lasts from two to fifty 
years (probably eight or ten is about the 
average), hence it should not be used in a 
rotation at all, or if so, in rotations of 
eight or ten years -in length. 

I have mentioned in advance these ob- 
jections to the use of alfalfa, because they 
all grow out of the nature and habits of 
the plant, and it is not wise to be carried 
away suddenly with enthusiasm for a new 
plant which has been found to be extreme- 
ly useful and profitable under widely dif- 
ferent conditions. 

Nevertheless, alfalfa is destined to oc- 
cupy a much larger place in the agricul- 
ture of the United States than it does at 
present. , The very conditions that make 
a clover crop uncertain are often favora- 
ble to the growth of alfalfa, and it has be- 



98 CLOVER FARMING. 

come a maxim that where clover ends 
alfalfa begins. The experience of the last 
few years in different sections of the Mid- 
dle and Northern states has shown that it 
can be grown on much heavier lands and 
with a much more compact subsoil than 
was supposed possible a few years ago. 
Wherever in the Missouri Valley and west 
red and mammoth clover do not succeed 
after a thorough trial, alfalfa should be 
tried. Where these succeed it is scarcely 
necessary to look any further. The man 
who is not satisfied with a first-class crop 
of clover, or clover and timothy, must be 
hard to suit, indeed. Where these fail, 
not for lack of proper cultivation, but be- 
cause the soil dries out too deeply in the 
dry autumns and winters, it maybe entire- 
ly possible to secure hay from alfalfa 
equal, if not, indeed, superior, when prop- 
erly cured, to the best clover. It should 
be freely conceded that alfalfa hay cured 
when at its best in the drier climates of 
western Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, 
is superior to the very best clover hay. 



ALFALFA VJ 

The man who fails with clover from lack 
of proper cultivation, will certainly fail 
with alfalfa. It tolerates no slipshod 
methods of cultivation. It must have land 
rich to begin with. It is accustomed to 
being well fed — a veritable aristocrat in 
this respect. The soil should be thor- 
oughly prepared, harrowed repeatedly 
during the early spring in order to germin- 
ate and then destroy the weeds, and the 
seed sown at a rate of not less than twenty 
to twenty-five pounds per acre, and well 
covered. It is not safe to sow until all 
danger from frost is passed. While under 
irrigation it can be sown with other crops 
as the clovers and other grasses are in the 
region of reliable rainfall, we would advise 
the beginner to give it the full use of the 
land, and, as it is not ? rapid grower until 
fairly started, the weeds must be kept down 
with a mower. No stock of any kind 
should be allowed to graze on it the first 
year, and it should be mown as soon as 
it is well started to bloom, whether it be 
six inches high, or two feet. In short, if 



100 CLOVER FAP.MIX1. 

we wish to grow alfalfa successfully, we 
must adapt the new conditions as far as 
possible to the established habits and 
tastes of the plant — a rich soil, a porous 
subsoil if possible, a top soil holding as 
little moisture as possible during the period 
of spring freezing, and then use it as a hay 
and soil plant rather than a pasture. 

It is difficult to speak in too high terms 
of the quality of alfa fa hay when proper- 
ly cured. In countries that have sufficient 
moisture to grow clover successfully, and 
where there is a probability of showery 
weather during harvest, the same difficul- 
ties will be met with in curing alfalfa that 
occur in curing clover hay, and the same 
methods heretofore suggested should be 
adopted. Alfalfa soaked with rain when 
partially dried, will lose value in about the 
same proportion that clover hay does 
under like conditions. It has the same 
sort of a thin leaf, exceedingly rich in 
nutritive matter, but liable to lose its 
structure through hot suns and hence 
equally liable to fail to evaporate the sap 



ALFALFA. 101 

from the stalk, then crumble and fall to 
the ground. 

Experiments conducted by farmers in 
the last few years have shown that on 
alfalfa soils above described, it is a valua- 
ble crop almost anywhere in the United 
States, but its particular value lies in its 
adaptation to soils which, from lack of 
moisture, or capacity to retain moisture, 
fail to grow reliable crops of clover. It 
is a favorite with some farmers on the 
loess soils of western Iowa, and after we 
cross the Missouri and go westward, we 
find the preference for alfalfa over clover 
increases in about the same proportion 
that the possibilities of growing clover 
decrease. I have great hopes that over a 
very large extent of country west of the 
Missouri alfalfa will be *ound to meet the 
wants of farmers who, sooner or later, 
must have some kind of legume to restore 
the great waste now going on from con- 
tinuous cultivation of grain for sale to 
other farmers for feed, or for shipment to 
a distant market. Where alfalfa cannot 



102 CLOVEIi FARMING. 

be made to succeed after a thorough trial 
on these lands, some other legume, of 
which the most promising just now is the 
soja bean, must be found to restore wasted 
fertility 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BARN ON FIRE. 

HBOUT ten years ago, probably in 
1887 or 1888, an Iowa farmer, an 
acquaintance of mine, was capti- 
vated with the theory advanced by cer 
tain Eastern. agricultural papers that clo- 
ver hay of a very superior quality could 
be made by putting the crop in the barn 
quite green — merely wilted, in fact. He 
was the proud owner of a fine octagonal 
barn about eighty feet in diameter, and 
he undertook to test the correctness of 
the theory without taking into account the 
difference in structure between a Western 
barn and barns in which this theory had 
been tested successfully, namely, where 
they had very tight floors, ship lapped 
sides, no windows, doors closing on bev- 
eled edges and kept tightly closed after 



104 CLOVER FARMING. 

the hay is put in, with good ventilators in 
the roof; in short, wooden silos. He 
spent one day hauling in this wilted hay, 
dropping it from the fork into the center 
of the huge bay in the middle of the barn, 
not disturbing it after it fell, thus forming, 
as it naturally would, a cone-shaped mass 
in the middle of the bay. He noticed 
next morning that it had become quite 
hot during the night, and concluded to 
wait until the crop could be cured in 
proper condition, and then filled up the 
bay with well cured hay. He told me 
that the next winter when he was feeding 
out this hay to his herd of cattle, he hap- 
pened to strike the fork with considerable 
force into the top of this cone of wilted 
clover and was surprised to see it slip from 
his hands and go down with apparently no 
resistance almost the full length of the 
handle. On examining, he found that the 
entire cone was charred to blackness, the 
structure of the hay disorganized, and was 
still more surprised to find that his cattle 
ate it with great relish. This affords a fine 



THE BARN ON FIRE. 105 

example of combustion of hay without 
flame, and the circumstances forbid any 
other conclusion than that it was sponta- 
neous. 

In the autumn of 1889, a farmer living 
near Marshalltown, Iowa, built a number 
of stacks of clover hay in his meadow, one 
of them from material quite green, the 
rest after it was well cured. The stack 
first built was observed to steam in the 
early mornings for some days, and after- 
ward to sink in at the top near the center. 
Horses running in the field after the after- 
math furnished a full bite, having access 
to all the stacks, seemed to prefer this 
stack to all others, and ate in some dis- 
tance all around. One morning, when the 
owner happened to be looking in the 
direction of the stack, it burst into flame 
at the top and burned to the ground, the 
rest of the stacks remaining in good con- 
dition. This furnishes an example of 
combustion that was evidently spontane- 
ous with flame. 

In the last ten days of August and the 



106 CLOVER FARMING. 

first fifteen days of September, about one 
hundred cases of barn and stack fires were 
reported from northern Iowa (many of 
the reports being made to me personally) 
together with a few in the central and 
southern portions. From a mass of cor- 
respondence received about that time, 
when the subject was attracting large at- 
tention in Iowa and adjoining states, I 
give the following sample: 

"Enclosed find a sample of clover hay 
put up in June, on the third day after cut- 
ting, in a barn that would hold a hundred 
tons. It became so hot that it could not 
be held in the naked hand, and tons'of it 
are completely spoiled. Farmers are in a 
panic here about their hay. Stacks and 
barns are taking fire and they do not know 
"what to do. Fifty tons of hay burned 
within one-half mile of my own farm last 
night, from its own heat. This hay was 
watched, as it was expected to burn, and 
there was no question as to its cause. One 
barn two miles east of here was emptied 
of its hay day before yesterday, which was 
already on fire in the inside of the mow 
and kept down by water till it was hauled 
out to the field. After being hauled out, 
it took fire and burned completely up." 
H. R. Leaming, Wyoming, Iowa. 



THE BARN ON FIRE. 107 

About the same time the barn of Mr. L. 
G. Clute, of Manchester, Iowa, took fire 
in a very mysterious way and burned to 
the ground. It was insured in the Farm- 
ers' Insurance Company, of Cedar Rapids, 
Iowa. The adjuster made a personal in- 
vestigation and reported to his company, 
which report was published in the Cedar 
Rapids, (Iowa) Gazette, as follows: 

The barn was 60x100 feet, the mow be- 
ing 40x90 feet, and 30 feet deep, contain- 
ing nearly five hundred tons of hay. Early 
in haying season green clover had been 
put in one bent, and ever since it had been 
heating until at last it took fire by spon- 
taneous combustion. When discovered, 
there was in three chimney holes, as the 
neighbors called them, a blue blaze spring- 
ing out over each, some two or three feet 
under the roof. The fire was located far 
beneath at the depth of thiity feet. * * 
This blue blaze was gas, and the depths 
beneath were gas wells on a small scale. 
One hundred and three neighbors collect- 
ed to fight the fire and worked two days 
and nights to save the hay. Thirteen out 
of the one hundred and three succumbed 
to the effects of the gas and had to stop 
work, one being so violently ill as a result 
that he is not likely to recover. 



108 CLOVER FARMING. 

A Chicago journal, of August 28, 
1889, contained an article on the subject 
by Professor Sanborn, formerly director 
of the Missouri Experiment Station, as 
follows: 

In fact, I never knew before this case, 
of a barn burning where either lightning, 
coal oil lanterns, or satisfactory evidence 
of incendiarism — generally for insurance — 
was not the easily inciting cause. Hay or 
fodder that is green enough to ferment 
will pack closely in a mow by its very 
weight, and as it heats it settles closer and 
closer, of course excluding the circulation 
of air, except it be by a very slow move- 
ment. As the hotter part is the center of 
the mow, it will be seen to be very doubt- 
ful whether air, always essential to flame, 
will be present in amount sufficient to 
produce flame. I doubt whether sponta- 
neous combustion of hay or corn fodder 
is possible. 

I quote this as an illustration of the 
skepticism of really scientific men as to 
the possibility of spontaneous combustion 
of hay. On reading the article I sent the 
professor a sample of charred clover hay 
that I had received a day or two before 



THE BARN ON FIKfc l<i9 

from Mr. C. H. Seager, of Gilman, Iowa, 
whose barn had recently been burned, and 
received the following reply: 

All preconceived views of the matter 
are puerile before facts. The charred ma- 
terial looks much like matter burned in an 
air insufficient for full combustion. Char- 
ring does not imply flame, but rather the 
contrary. The heating of green food in 
the mow is due to a ferment, and not to 
direct oxidation, in the old sense of the 
word, or in the sense that wood is burned. 
Will the ferments (low plant life) thus 
produce self-destruction or carry fermen- 
ation forward until it becomes oxidation? 
Fermentation ceases with lack of mois- 
ture, and flame will not occur where it is 
abundant. I confess I never saw such 
charred material as you have forwarded 
to me. While it does not follow that 
combustion need be the result, I confess 
to the belief that the circumstances do not 
warrant the denial of the possibility of it, 
at least by me, with the evidence before 
me. I hope that you will obtain the views 
of the highest biological authority in the 
country, for the question is an interesting 
and important one." 

While I know of no instance of sponta- 
neous combustion where the hay was pure 



liO CLOVER FARMING 

timothy or prairie grass, clover is not the 
only forage that is liable to take tire in 
this mysterious way. In the fall of 1894, 
owing to the extreme drouth of that year 
and the scarcity of hay, an unusually large 
amount of corn in the West was put in 
shock and much of it shredded for cattle 
feed. Mr. Martin Flynn, of Des Moines, 
Iowa, who has a farm of fifteen hundred 
acres on the Des Moines, Northern & 
Western railway, at Flynn Station, a few 
miles out of Des Moines, built a hay 
shed eighty feet long, about twenty-five 
feet in width, and of the usual height. He 
had a field of eighty acres of corn which 
he cut for fodder and shredded, and at the 
first .stored about two-thirds of it in this 
barn. He noticed that, when about two- 
thirds of it was shredded, the mass was 
becoming very hot, and removed the shred- 
der to another field of corn which he had 
purchased for winter forage. Fearing 
spontaneous combustion, he cut trenches 
across the shed and laid a continuous row 
of tiles in each trench, ditch fashion, in 



THE BARK ON FIRE. Ill 



order to allow the accumulating heat to 
escape. The mass seemed to cool down 
after the operation, and thinking all dan 
ger passed, he shredded the remaining 
one-third of this eighty acres and filled 
up the shed. One afternoon some weeks 
afterwards, and probably about two 
months from the time the first fifty acres 
were shredded, the shed took fire and 
burned to the ground. He believes that 
if he had not put the last twenty-six acres 
of shredded fodder into this shed there 
would have been no fire. 

He had stored a large amount of shred- 
ded fodder in his large barn, and on ex- 
amining it he found it heating, and cut 
trenches down through it for the purpose 
of ventilation. In the center it wa- very 
dry and some of it charred and black; but 
near the bottom there was some noisture 
remaining. No further damage occurred. 
In the fall of 1897, Mr. Flynn had a 
stack of millet hay take fire under the fol- 
lowing conditions: When the millet of 
which it was composed "began to cover 



11 '2 CLOVER FARMING. 

the ground in the spring, he noticed that 
some skips had been made by the man 
who sowed it. He had these strips re- 
sown, some quite thickly by mistake, and 
the rest with the usual allowance of seed. 
A rain came on immediately after sowing 
and a fine growth was the result. The en- 
tire field was mown at the same time and 
stacked, the millet from the first sowing 
being quite dry — too dry, in fact — but that 
from the strips quite green. All was 
stacked together on Saturday, but not 
topped out for lack of time. On topping 
it out on Monday it was observed to be 
quite hot on the northwestern corner. 
Afterward it became hot all over, and for 
this'reason was watched very closely. It 
seemed, however, to cool off in time, but 
began to settle in at the top and was, 
therefore, watched the more closely. The 
land around the stack, as well as the en- 
tire field, had been fall plowed in the usual 
course of farm operations. One morning, 
a little after daylight, some weeks after it 
it had been built, it was discovered to 



TH*2 BARN ON FHtE. 113 

break out in flame and burned to the 
ground. 

I have gone into the above minute de- 
tails, because the scientific mind in the 
United States seems quite unwilling to ad- 
mit the possibility of the spontaneous 
combustion of clover hay or other forage, 
and in the above examples, occurring over 
a period of ten years, I present an array 
of facts, all of them derived from thor- 
oughly reliable sources, which can be ac- 
counted for, in my judgment, in but one 
way, namely, spontaneous combustion. 
They are but a small portion of facts col- 
lected in the last ten years, all pointing to 
the same conclusion. Mr. J. W. Bopp, of 
Fayette county, investigated, during the 
fall of 1889 (in which there were more 
cases of spontaneous combustion reported 
than in all the years following) some fifty 
cases occurring in northeastern Iowa. In 
all, or a.: least in nearly all the instances, 
the hay was put in damp, either from rain 
or dew, or with wet bunches interspersed, 
the result of attempting to cure a heavy 



114 CLOVER FARMING 

crop without the use of the tedder. In 
most of the cases into which we have in- 
quired, the hay was placed on timbers that 
furnished an opportunity for the moder- 
ately free access of air from beneath. 

It will be noticed in every case that these 
mysterious fires did not occur until some 
weeks after the hay or other forage was 
stored in the barn or stack, and, where ob- 
servations were made, until after the heat 
developed had time to drive the moisture 
— not merely the surplus, but the fixed 
moisture — from the mass. I know of no 
instance in which fire has occurred while 
vapor could be seen arising from the barn 
or stack in the morning, nor, indeed, for 
some considerable time afterwards. When 
the barn, shed, or stack was suspected, as 
in many of the cases reported to me, and 
closely watched, the fire did not occur un- 
til the mass had begun to cool down. In 
one case, not cited above, the farmer dis- 
covered certain funnels or craters near the 
center of the mass from which there was 
a constant current of what seemed to be 



THE BARN ON FIRE. 115 

gas, similar to that mentioned by the ad- 
juster of the Farmers' Insurance Company 
in the Clute instance. He lowered an egg 
into one of these openings and found that 
the gas consumed the shell and dried out 
the contents without burning them. 

The conclusions we can draw from these 
facts are the following: 

That spontaneous combustion of clover 
hay, corn fodder and millet is possible. 

That it is much more frequent in certain 
years than in others* and in certain sec- 
tions than in other sections of the same 
state. 

That it does not occur until all the mois- 
ture, whether fixed or excess, has been 
expelled by the heat, nor until from four 
to eight weeks after the hay has been 
stored. 

That it is dangerous to put largeamounts 
of very imperfectly cured forage, or for- 
age containing over twenty per cent, of 
moisture, in a large bay, and that the more 
compactly the mass settles the more dan- 
gerous it becomes. 



/16 CLOVER FARMING. 

That when hay containing a surplus of 
moisture is allowed to drop from the 
horse fork continually in one place, a dan- 
ger point is established, and it becomes 
the more dangerous because on the center 
line of the bay. 

The observant farmer will find, if he 
ivatches his hay barn closely when putting 
in hay a trifle green, much that will con- 
firm the correctness of the conclusions 
above drawn. For example, if, after put- 
ting in a few loads of hay which he knov s 
to have been imperfectly cured, and es- 
pecially if it has been wet with dew or 
rain, or brought in late, or on a day when 
the atmosphere is heavily laden with 
moi-sture, he will examine the surface of 
the mow next morning, it will be found 
apparently wet, and especially at the 
points where a large number of forkfuls 
were dropped in succession. What has 
happened during the night? Every kind 
of forage, and especially clover hay, brings 
with it to the barn unnumbered millions 
of minute microscopic plants, which it is 



THE BARN ON FIRE. 117 

sufficient for our present purpose to de- 
scribe under the general name of fungus. 
These, with moisture, under a summer tem- 
perature, at once begin to grow, and with 
great rapidity, and one of the universal 
evidences of their growth is the develop- 
ment of a large amount of heat. No mat- 
ter how dry grain may be put in a stack, 
under the atmospheric conditions prevail- 
ing in humid regions, heating will result; 
or, as the farmer says, the grain in the 
stack or mow u goes through the sweat." 
Given a large amount of this damp hay 
and time enough for the heat to dry out, 
not only the surplus but the fixed mois- 
ture, usually from ten to fifteen per cent, 
in grain, and from fifteen to twenty-five in 
forage, and there is a possibility of com- 
bustion, whether accompanied by, flame 
or not. It is said by scientists that the 
microscopic plants which we call by the 
general name of fungi, have power to de- 
velop a heat of one hundred and forty-five 
degrees, which then proves fatal to them- 
selves. If this heat is not sufficient to 



118 CLOVER FARMING. 

drive out the moisture in the mass, as in 
the case of silage, whether in the stack or 
silo, no spontaneous combustion will oc- 
cur. It is a well known fact that in the 
climate of England, in wet seasons, hay of 
all kinds is put up directly from the swath, 
and even wet with rain, into stacks which 
are made as solid as possible by running 
over them a heavy iron roller, and that 
this forage keeps reasonably well, being, 
in fact, a form of silage. The immediate 
cause of spontaneous combustion seems to 
be by the development of gases which, on 
account of the compactness of the mass, 
are not allowed to escape. 

I do not care to enter into any scientific 
discussion of the subject, for two reasons: 
First, it would make the chapter entirely 
too long; and second, I have never yet 
seen any satisfactory explanation of the 
cause of the development of gases under 
the conditions mentioned, and it is need- 
less to say that I am not competent to 
form any explanation of my own. My 
aim is to point out the real danger and 



THK BABN ON PIRB. 119 

offer suggestions as to how this danger 
may possibly be avoided. 

First, do not build a hay bay over twen- 
ty feet high nor over thirty feet wide, and 
see that every bay of these dimensions is 
provided with a good ventilator in the 
roof, and no ventilation in the bottom. 
I prefer putting clover, or other hay, di- 
rectly on the ground, dry, of course, for 
the double purpose of shutting out ventil- 
ation from below and of economy in the 
construction of the building, thus taking 
the weight of the hay from the timbers. 
The more perfect the roof ventilation, the 
greater the opportunity for the escape of 
the heat and gases that may be developed 
in the mass. 

Second, be careful about storing clover, 
corn fodder, or millet with a surplus of 
moisture. They can safely carry about 
twenty per cent., which is about the aver- 
age amount when clover hay is stored in 
good condition, the leaves and stalk being 
dry but not brittle; and be especially 
careful when this moisture is made up, 



120 CLOVER FARMING. 

not of the sap in the plant, but of rain or 
dew, or where the atmosphere is saturated 
with moisture, as it frequently is at sun- 
down, and sometimes all day during the 
haying season. 

Third, do not allow the fork to drop its 
load in one spot or along the center. It 
is better to have a hand in the mow to 
swing it from one side to another as need- 
ed, and to store it as it had to be stored 
or mowed away before the advent of the 
horse fork. 

Fourth, let the hay rest on the ground 
and not on loose boards or rails, which 
provide for a current of air from beneath. 
In short, let out the heat and gas if it ac- 
cumulates, from above, but shut out the 
air from below. 

From the above statements and conclu- 
sions the farmer must be the best judge a> 
to what he had better do in case his barn 
is in danger from spontaneous combustion. 
If it was my own case, I would in the 
earlier stages follow the example of Mr. 
Flynn, above mentioned; that is. I would 



THE B^RN o:\ FtRE. 121 

provide in some way a means of escape 
for the gas. If, however, combustion has 
already begun without flame, and the open- 
ing of the mass would admit air freely, I 
would prefer, in order to save the barn, to 
smother it out in some way by excluding 
the air. If it were in a stack, I would let 
it alone and make further independent ob- 
servations as to the mysterious phenom- 
ena of spontaneous combustion. 



CHAPTER X. 

A CROP OF CLOVER SEED. 

fN THE production of a paying crop 
of clover seed, three forces must 
work together and with a will, na- 
ture, man and bumble bees, or more strict- 
ly speaking, insects; and if these do not 
work together, the seed crop will be, to 
a greater or less extent, a failure. There 
must be a good stand to begin with, of 
plants long enough to be handled with the 
usual implements without waste, and yet 
not too rank, and ripening evenly at the 
same time. This presupposes on nature's 
part a good soil and season, and on man's 
part even sowing in a well prepared seed 
bed, and in general good management; 
but with all these and without the co oper- 
ation of insects, not a single grain of clo» 
ver seed can be formed. 



A. CROP OF CLOVER SEED 123 

I said all this one day when visiting my 
friend, Job Barshear, at his farm. He was 
willing to admit the necessity of the co- 
operation of nature and man, but he evi- 
dently did not believe even a little bit in 
the necessity for the co-operation of in- 
sects. He said to me (if I recollect aright 
it was about the iothof July) as he looked 
out on young Job's first ten-acre field of 
mammoth clover which was just beginning 
to bloom: "Do you mean to tell me that 
there are enough bumble bees in the whole 
county to get around to every one of the 
fifty or sixty little blossoms (which go to 
make up one big blossom) in this ten-acre 
field and thus start a clover seed to grow- 
ing in each one, and do all this business 
before the blossoms begin to die? Not 
much!" 

"It does look a little unreasonable," 
said I, "but I notice a few stalks just over 
there that for some reason are late and 
have not yet begun to bloom. Suppose 
you cover a hundred of these blossoms 
with some kind of a screen that will keep 



124 CLOVER FARMING. 

out not only the bumble bees, but all other 
insects, and then in the fall count the heads 
and seeds, after examining them very care- 
fully, and see how much seed you will get, 
and then compare these with the same 
number of heads to which the insects have 
had free access." 

"Oh," said he, "I am not going to that 
bother; it is too nonsensical." 

"So it seems; but this is just what Dar- 
win did when preparing to write his book 
on "Cross and Self- Fertilization of Plants." 
He covered one hundred heads of red clo- 
ver with netting, counted the seeds, and 
then counted the seeds of a hundred heads 
right along side of them to which the in- 
sects had access. He found in these un- 
covered heads 2,720 clover seeds; in those 
covered with netting he found — not one. 
You will see a full account of it in the 
book mentioned, page 361. 

"This simple experiment has been re- 
peated by Professor Cook, of the Agricul- 
tural Department at Washington, and with 
the same results. You will find his report 



A CROP OF CLOVER SEED 125 

in Bulletin No. 26, Division of Entomol- 
ogy* P a S e 87. Professor Beal, after inves- 
tigating the subject quite thoroughly, came 
to the same conclusion, which you will 
find in full in his book entitled "Grasses 
of North America," pages 325-328. The 
New Zealand and Australian farmers tried 
to grow clover seed without bumble bees, 
they not being native of that country, and 
failed. In 1884 they shipped over a lot of 
bumble bees from England, and now, ac- 
cording to Thompson, "Insect Life," Vol. 
IV, page 157, they have increased so rap- 
idly that the natives fear they will become 
a pest. So you see, my friend, that those 
who have gone to the trouble to sift the 
matter to the bottom are dead against you. 
"But let us look into this matter for our- 
selves. Let us lie down a bit and watch 
what is going on about us. Notice first 
what great numbers of bumble bees come 
sailing in from every direction. See how 
busy they are, and how little time it takes 
them. Look at that big one over there. 
She puts her nib into one floret, or little 



128 CLOVER FARMING. 

flower, and seems to say, 'That's good' — 
into the next, and draws it out instantly, 
evidently some one has been there before 
and the honey is gone. Thus she keeps 
on from morning to night, stopping only 
to visit her nest with a load. And then 
see what honey bees are about us." 

"Nonsense," said Job. "Honey bees 
don't work on red clover." 

"Keep still, will you, for two minutes 
and use your eyes. There is one with 
three bands around her, evidently an Ital- 
ian. There's another. There's hundreds 
of them in sight if you just look for them, 
all busy as only bees can be. You will 
notice there are few, or none, of the little 
black bees here. They don't seem to be 
able to reach down to the pollen." 

"Well," said Job, "if that don't beat cre- 
ation. I never saw bees work on red clo- 
ver before. Did you bring them with you 
from town?" 

"We don't often find honey bees," I re- 
plied, "on the first crop of common red, 
because the white and alsike clovers are 



A CROP OF CLOVER SEED 127 

plenty about the time it blooms, and the 
bees get the honey easier and quicker from 
these than from the deeper blossoms. 
You would not see them here to-day if it 
were not that the other clovers are drying 
up for want of rain. You will find them 
on the red clover in the pastures where 
the cattle have kept it back from bloom- 
ing at the usual time. But what else do 
you see?" 

"Nothing but butterflies." 

"Are they not poking their nibs down 
into these florets, and may they not help? 
But let us dissect a floret and see what we 
find. Deep down in the tube we find the 
male and female parts of the flower. 
There is sex in all flowers. The pollen, 
or male element, must either fall on the 
female parts, called ovules, or be placed 
on them. In corn the fine dust of the tas- 
sels falls on the silk. If you cut the tas- 
sel off a hill of corn standing by itself, you 
will have no ear. If the tassels were be- 
low and the silk above, there could be no 
corn, That is the precise situation, as 



129 CLOVER FARMING. 

you may see for yourself with the help oi 
this small microscope, in all these florets. 
The male and female organs lie together, 
but the stamens, or the male organs, a half- 
dozen or more of them in each little floret, 
are shorter than the pistil, or the female, 
and the pollen, or fertilizing dust, from 
these would naturally fall down and away 
from the pistil were it not that the bees or 
butterflies poke their nibs in past them to 
the honey that lies below and carry the 
dust to the next flower." 

"If all this be so," said Job, u why don't 
the first crop of red clover produce seed?" 

"For the very good reason that the bees 
do not work on it. The nest of bumble 
bees does not carry a stock of workers 
through the winter as does the common 
hive bee. The queens alone survive. They 
start out in the spring, build their nests, 
lay eggs, and proceed to rear their young. 
For this reason there are comparatively 
few of them seen in the fields when the 
first crop of red clover is coming into 
bloom and ready to set seeds, The honey 



A CROP OF CLOVER SEED. 129 

bees have plenty to do on the white clo- 
ver and alsike, and later, on the linden and 
bass wood, hence they do not bother with 
red clover except at times when no other 
flowers are available. 

"The first crop of red clover, however, 
does produce some seed. Where red clo- 
ver and timothy are grown together and 
the timothy cut for seed, there will gener- 
ally be found more or less, clover seed 
with it, and this comes from the first crop. 
The reason, therefore, that the first crop 
of red clover does not produce seed, is be- 
cause the insects do not fertilize it. In 
point of fact, if you will examine a crop 
of mammoth clover carefully, you will see 
that the earliest heads of it are compara- 
tively barren of seed. This is one of the 
reasons which lead farmers to pasture off 
mammoth clover up to the ioth or 15th of 
June. Even then I never expect a full 
crop of clover seed of any kind if the sea- 
son is such as to favor a continuous growth 
of white clover through the season. There 
are not usually, it is quite true, sufficient 



130 CLOVER FARMING. 

bumble bees to do the business, and we 
must depend on the help of the Italian 
honey bees if we expect a full crop of 
seed." 

"Suppose, then, I were to pasture off 
the red clover until the middle of June. 
Would I get seed from the first crop?" 

"Certainly, if other conditions were 
right." 

"Since we are on this seed business, how 
am I to know whether a crop of clover 
seed is worth cutting?" 

"By examining it, of course. If you 
have a full stand and an average of twenty 
grains to the head, it is generally safe to 
figure on a crop of about two bushels, if it 
can all be saved. If it averages thirty 
grains per head, I would feel safe in count- 
ing on a crop of three bushels. I would 
rather pasture than cut a crop of less than 
two bushels." 

"When would you cut this crop?' 

"When it is ripe; when the heads are 
all turned a dark brown." 

"What is the best machine to use?" 



A CROP OP CLOVER SEED. 13] 

"An old-fashioned self-raker. These 
are becoming scarce now, and where one 
cannot be had readily, I would use an or- 
dinary binder, removing the binding ap- 
paratus and putting on a flax attachment, 
which would cost about $5.00. Others re- 
move the binding apparatus, leaving the 
deck board and dropper, and bolting on 
the latter a three-inch board of the same 
thickness, extending eighteen inches to 
the rear. Then bolt a piece of iron half 
an inch wide, a quarter of an inch thick, 
and eighteen inches long, on the rear end 
of this dropper and at right angles to it, 
bending in a semi-circle upward to the 
driver's seat and to the end of which they 
attach a small, rope or cord, bringing it up 
through a small pulley fastened on the 
topof the machine and above the elevating 
rollers, and extending to a treadle on the 
footboard in front of the driver's seat. 
Wood pieces are put in in lieu of the iron 
parts that have been removed with the 
binding apparatus. In this way the clover 
can be cut and dumped in such gavels as 



132 CLOVER FARMING. 

seems best. Where the stand is thin, it 
can be cut with the ordinary mower and 
raked in small windrows, taking care to 
rake it only when slightly damp, especial- 
ly after it has had two or three days of 
hot sun. Of late the inventive genius of 
the American has supplied us at small cost 
with the buncher which can be attached 
to the mowing machine." 

"What about threshing it?" 

"The old rule is to let it lie two or three 
weeks until there comes at least one good 
rain. I doubt the wisdom of the rule. 
When clover had to be flailed off with a 
birch limb, as it did when 1 was a boy, 
and hulled with an old-fashioned thresh- 
ing machine with the cylinder boxed, that 
was the proper way. With a modern clo- 
ver huller it is quite different. If the 
mammoth, for example, is allowed to lie 
long, it is liable to be injured by hail, or 
if wet weather conies about the last of 
August or the first of September, while it 
lies in the gavels, the under seed may 
sprout. The weather in the scaron or 



A CROP OF CLOVER SEED. 133 

mammoth is hot and dry, and I would 
thresh it as soon as it becomes dry and 
brittle. A rain or two will not hurt it in 
the least, but rather help. 

"It is more difficult to handle a second 
crop of the common red. When it is 
ready for cutting the days are getting cool 
and short. I would cut as soon as the 
heads were all brown and would thresh it 
in a couple of weeks, if possible. Clover 
cannot be hulled when it is at all damp, 
and hence in the latter part of the season 
six hours' work of the huller in a day is 
about all that we can expect. 

"The most serious difficulty in growing 
clover seed is that of getting a huller when 
you want it. The threshermen are busy 
with grain and will not usually stop to hull 
clover seed. They, therefore, compel the 
clover grower to await their leisure, and it 
is often a question whether he will do this 
at a great loss or stack his seed clover, top 
it out with slough grass, and wait until 
zero weather in the winter before attempt- 
ing to thresh. Often it is either this or 



134 CLOVER FARMING. 

buy a huller himself, and where he is en- 
gaged in growing clover seed largely, or 
a few farmers in one neighborhood are 
doing so, this is the proper thing to do. 
In fact, it is often the only way of secur- 
ing the seed after it has been grown." 

I do not think Job Barshear believed 
more than half that I told him that day, 
so hard it is to change the fixed opinions 
of farmers. I had the satisfaction of know- 
ing, however, that the facts pointed out 
are such as will be clearly before him all 
summer long, and I feel confident that 
when he has had time to see for himself 
and turn the thing over in his mind for a 
year or two, he will come to my opinion. 
The facts, as I have stated them, are all 
within reach of every farmer, and he can 
demonstrate their correctness for himself 
with very little trouble and no expense. 



CHAPTER XI. 

SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD. 

+flT T IS written in a very old part of the 
II good Book, that when the good 
people came together Satan came 
also among them, or words to that effect. 
When the clovers come into any country, 
county or state in great tracts of broad 
acres, when they grow freely on every 
part of every farm, then, not only one, but 
many satans, come in the form of various 
kinds of ravenous, and otherwise destruc- 
tive insects, attacking the root, the stalk, 
the leaf, the seed, the flower; and not con- 
tent with this, follow it into the barn and 
devour the dry hay. 

More than eighty species of insects have 
already been noted, living, to a greater or 
less extent ca the clovers, and every year 
or two some new clover satan, or adver- 



136 OliOVKR FARMING. 

sary, is discovered. The most of these, 
such as various kinds of grasshoppers, 
leaf hoppers, butterflies, etc., are not pecul- 
iar to the clovers, while others do but 
little damage and need not be mentioned 
here. In a contest with any of them, the 
farmer is to a great extent powerless on 
account of their wide distribution and in- 
credible capacity of increase in a very 
short period of time, and must rely, in his 
controversy with these satans, on improved 
methods of rotation, and on their natural 
enemies, the parasites, which by a wise 
and merciful dispensation of the Giver of 
all good, in due time, always hold them 
m check and prevent the total destruction 
of the crop. Nevertheless, it is very im- 
portant for the clover grower to under- 
stand the nature and habits of the most 
destructive and dangerous of them, and 
to know the little satans, or adversaries, 
when he sees them. 

If you are walking through the clover 
pasture some Sabbath afternoon in the 



SATAN IN Tilt CLOVER FIELD. 13? 

summer time and looking, perhaps, for 
four-leaved clovers, thinking about farm 
matters instead of more sacred themes, 
you ma)' sometimes notice the leaves of 
the white clover folded together on the 
central axis. You stop and say to your- 
self: "It cannot be dry enough, or hot 
enough yet to wilt clover." You pick off 
a leaf, open it out, and if your eyes are 
very good, you may notice from one to 
twenty little orange-colored maggots busy 
at work. If so, you have come across, 
perhaps for the first time, the clover leaf 
midge. It may have been there every 
year, but you did not notice 'it before. 
Fortunately, it is not a bad pest, and sel- 
dom attacks the red clovers, and then only 
the lower leaves, on which it produces 
galls, doing on this very little damage. 
The grazing of cattle and its exposed sit- 
uation on the leaf, rendering it liable to 
the ravages of birds and parasites pecul- 
iar to itself, all stand in the way of its in- 
crease to any dangerous extent. 



138 CLOVER FARMING. 

You are making the first crop of red 
clover hay, and you notice that some of 
the stalks pull o..t and are pushed on 
by the mower. You get off and examine, 
and find the stalks pull up easily, as 
though something were the matter with 
the root, and you wonder what it is. You 
do not think much about it, however, and 
suppose these stalks died prematurely in 
some way. The second crop starts, but 
it does not look just right, and much of it 
stops growing about the time it ought to 
head out. You now begin to wonder what 
is the matter with the clover. 

There is matter enough. One of the 
mea'nest of the clover satans has been at 
work in the field. Its name is the clover 
root borer. As a matter of curiosity mere- 
ly, we might say to you that the wise men 
call it "Hylesinus Trifolii." You will like 
the name of clover root borer best because 
it .exactly describes its work. That you 
may understand it better, I give you an 
illustration: 



SAT AX IN THE CLOVER FIELD. 



139 



Last spring the bug (marked "d" in the 
illustration) after awakening from its win- 
ter sleep, found a stalk of yearling clover 
in your field. It wanted a home in which 

to rear its young. 
It bored a hole in 
the crown of the 
root, ate out a 
very large cavity, 
and said with the 
Psalmist: 

"This is my rest; hero 

still I'll stay, 

For I do like it well." 

proceeded to 
lay a number of 
eggs, and died, 
having fulfilled 
its evil mission. 
In about a week 
the young satans 
hatched out, found plenty of good living 
handy in rliat clover crown, and as they 
grew, proceeded to bore down into the roots 
of the infested stalk (marked "a" in the 




140 CLOVER FARMW9. 

illustration), and if you will look closely, 
you will find them about the end of the root 
by the fall of the year. You can scarcely 
see the little rascals in the root, and so I 
have given you at u b" a magnified illus- 
tration, while u c" shows the form in which 
they come through the winter ready to 
hatch out in the spring and begin on the 
crop you have sown this year. They 
never do any harm to the young clover 
for the reason that it has not yet started 
when they begin their work in the spring. 
What now is to be done? Nothing, that 
I know of, except to plow up that clover 
field and let the birds, the mice, the go- 
phers, and the moles eat the grubs before 
they have time to hatch out the next spring. 
The only loss, therefore, from this pest is 
the seed crop and part of the fall pasture; 
loss enough, it is true, to the man who 
needs money, as most of us do. It is, how- 
ever, a blessing in disguise sometimes, to 
compel a farmer to plow up his clover in 
the fall of the second year and harvest his 
crop of nitrogen, gathered from the atmos- 



SATAN TN THE CLOVfcH FIELD. 141 

phere, before it is washed out of the soil 
by rains. 

You may notice some day when you are 
in the clover field, certain loaves with a 
circular disc eaten out of (hem about the 
shape of the marks that a co»v makes on 
a blue grass pasture when she has put her 
head through a barb wire fence from the 
adjoining field, or perhaps the lane, and 
shaved off everything clean .as far as her 
tongue can reach. This is the work of 
another beetle that seems to be too lazy 
to move its body, and has a neck well 
hinged. I know of no common name for 
it. Scientists call it the "flavescent clover 
beetle." I wish they would choose a sim- 
pler name. You will hardly find it if you 
look for it, as it will drop off the leaf and 
hide if you make the slightest movement. 
It is, therefore, scarcely necessary to illus- 
trate it, or even to describe it further. It 
is not likely to do much damage anyhow, 
and I tell you about it to set you to look- 
ing sharp when you happen to see these 
circular discs cut in the center or on the 
margin of the leaves of red clover 



142 



CLUVER FARMIXG. 



You may, perhaps, have noticed among 
the winter wheat, timothy, or the yarrow 
or thistles that grow in the pasture, a plant 
here and there which has broken down 
before producing seed. On examining it 
you will likely find it full of little grubs 
that are eating their way down, and thus 
causing the plant to dwindle and die. If 
the clover stood up as straight as the 
above mentioned plants, you would find 
the same insect at work here and there 




Jt 



FIG. II. THE CLOVER STEM BORER. 

among the larger clovers. This is the 
work of the clover stem borer. It is, as 
above stated, not peculiar to clover, nor 



SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD. 143 

is it likely to become a very serious pest, 
and the less likely, because it has, like 
most other pests of this kind, a number of 
parasites which keep it in check. How- 
ever, to gratify your curiosity and set you 
seeing things, I give an illustration (see 
Fig. II) for which I am indebted to the 
Department of Agriculture. 

The Germans, however, have given us 
a very destructive clover satan. (Devil, 
I would say, if it were not that the preach- 
ers might think I was poaching on their 
preserves and using profane language, 
though I never could understand why it 
was profane to call Satan by his Anglo- 
Saxon name.) This pest may give us 
very serious trouble before many years, 
although so far as I know it has not yet 
appeared west of Ohio nor at any great 
distance from streams, or large bodies of 
water. Its first appearance on this conti- 
nent was in Canada in 1853, in New York 
in 1881, at Buffalo in 1884, in northeast- 
ern Ohio along the lake shore in 1891, and 
more recently at Cincinnati.. Should it 



144 



CLOVER FARMING. 



reach the great clover fields of the West 
in a few years, there will be a lot of very 
sad and sorry farmers. Unlike other clo- 
ver pests, it is active both in its worm, or 
larval stage, and in its mature, or beetle 
stage, and literally eats up in one or other 
form, every part of the clover plant above 
ground. The following illustration will 
give the reader an idea of its capacity for 




FIG. III. THE CLOVER LEAF BEETLE. 



SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD. 145 

mischief, and he will not wonder after he 
studies it why we want the preachers' per- 
mission to call it a clover devil. 

In the illustration, u a" represents an egg 
greatly enlarged; the various "b's" repre- 
sent the different stages of growth while 
feeding on the leaf; u c" represents the 
young larva; "d" the head as viewed from 
beneath; u e" represents its jaws enlarged, 
both showing the capacity of the pest for 
mischief; "g" and "h" the pupa; "j" the 
side view of the beetle, and "k" a back 
view of the same slightly reduced from 
the natural size; and "1" and "m" the foot 
and antenna enlarged. For this illustra- 
tration we are indebted to Dr. Riley. 

The common name of this satan is "the 
clover leaf beetle." The scientists give it 
the jaw-breaking name of "Phytonomus 
punctatus," and when you meet in the re- 
ports of experiment stations with this jaw- 
breaker, you will understand that it means 
simply the clover leaf beetle. It begins 
its work early in the spring, commencing 



146 CLOVER FARMING. 

on the young leaves of the clover about 
as soon as they appear. It is waiting for 
them and hungry, but they are young yet 
and the farmer does not notice its work 
particularly until about May or June, 
when he will see the larvae eating the 
leaves as represented in the illustration, 
feeding sidewise on the edge of the leaf 
on the underside. Until he learns how to 
observe them, he will not see the beetles 
themselves — only their work. They saw 
him first and dropped to the ground and 
hid, as if troubled with a guilty conscience. 
After sundown they climb up the stalk, 
and while the good man is asleep, dream- 
ing, perhaps, of barns and sheds filled with 
well cured clover, and a stack or two in 
the field for which there was no room, 
millions of jaws are busy at work cutting 
down his clover and utterly destroying it 
in advance, compelling him to take his 
corn cutter and find winter forage for his 
cattle in the corn field. 

The mature beetles appear in July and 



SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD. 147 

August, and proceed at once to eat up 
whatever clover the larvae or worms have 
left. They lay their eggs, and another 
crop of larvae appear in September, 
change to pupae in October, and emerge 
as beetles in November. Some of these 
lay eggs from which larvae hatch and 
hibernate while quite small in the old clo- 
ver stems. Others hibernate as beetles, 
lay their eggs the following spring. The 
female lays from two to three hundred 
eggs in the stem of the clover, which it 
^ usually punctures for that purpose. The 
larvae, or worms, are constitutionally hun- 
gry, and consume every part of the plant 
above the surface of the earth. 

It will be seen at once that the farmer 
has very slight chance of success in enter- 
ing into a contest with this sort of pest. 
Spraying with Paris green would no Joubt 
kill them, as it would other pests; but wh« 
would go to work to spray a clover field? 
The best thing to be done is to keep your 
eyes open, and when the field is found to 



148 CLOVER FARMING. 

be infested in May, plow it up and put it 
in corn. In one sense there is a loss in 
this, but it is a loss that would have to be 
endured anyhow, and it is better to have 
a good crop of corn, than disappointed 
hopes in the way of a clover crop. 

The most common of all the pests, how- 
ever, that have yet appeared in the West- 
ern states, is the clover seed midge, quite 
common, indeed, in recent clover years, 
as far west as northern Iowa, but of whicn 
nothing has been heard lately. It will 
no doubt, however, appear in increasing 
numbers as soon as the practice of glow- 
ing clover seed has become quite general 
for two or three years in succession. That 
our readers may recognize it when it does 
come, we give three figures illustrating the 
insect. Figure IV is a large back view of 
the male with scales stripped off in order 
to- show the structure more clearly; and 
Figure V the female, while Figure VI rep- 
resents the maggot, or larva enlarged, and 
5epn from the underside of the leaf. The 



SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD 149 




} 




FIG. IV. THE 



CLOVER SEED MIDGE (MALE). 



150 CLOVER FARMING. 

main difference between this pest and the 
clover leaf midge, first mentioned, is that 




FIG. V. THE CLOVER SEED MIDGE (FEMALE). 

it has two more joints in its antennae, or 
feelers, than the clover leaf midge, and 
that its eggs are somewhat larger. You 
will need, however, a good pair of eyes to 
see either of them, as their average length 
is only about the one-hundredth part of 
an inch. The female, of the clover seed 
midge appears about the time the heads 
of the clover appear, and before the bloom, 



SATAN" 1ST THE CLOVER FIELD. 



151 




which stage of development occurs in 
central Iowa toward the latter part of 
May, and earlier or later south or north, 
according to latitude. In other words, 
the egg is deposited before 
the bloom appears, but after 
the head is formed. By the 
time the eggs are hatched 
into worms, the mouth of the 
floret is open, and the mag- 
gots work their way through 
the mouth down to the seed, 
feeding on it while it is yet 
/£jp\i\ in the dough state, after the 
manner of the wheat midge 
so common forty years ago. 
By the time the clover is nt 
to cut, these maggots wriggle out of the 
heads that have been accidentally fertil- 
ized by the bumblebees, pass into the 
ground, and the mature insects again ap- 
pear about the time the second crop of 
clover is ready for their mischief. It is 
this last crop that does the damage, mak- 
ing where they are at all numerous, a seed 



Vi 

FIG. VI 
THE LARVA 



152 CLOVER FARMING. 

crop on the common red clover unprofit- 
able, if not, in fact, impossible. 

How to deal with this pest is a problem. 
It could be held in check readily enough 
if the corn, and the inclination of the far- 
mer, and of the farmers all over the neigh- 
borhood, would lead them to cut their 
first crop very early before the insects are 
ready to leave the head. This, however, 
under conditions prevailing throughout 
the entire country is impracticable, inas- 
much as it would require the mowing at 
this early date, of pastures as well as 
meadows. However, in sections where 
clover seed growing is not an important 
feature of agriculture, comparatively little 
damage is done. By the time the pest 
has become general and entirely destruc- 
tive of the seed crop, parasites appear in 
great numbers. One of these belongs to 
the same family as the joint worm fly, un- 
dergoes its transformation within the seed, 
gnaws a hole through it large enough to 
let it out shortly after the maggots have 
left the seed to go into the ground. An- 



KATAN IN TUB CLOVER FIELD. 153 

other parasite stays with the midge, goes 
into the ground with it, and emerges when 
full grown from the cocoon, which con 
tains a dead midge. 

In sections where clover seed is an im- 
portant crop, the thing to do is to drop 
out the common red and use the mam- 
moth. This variety, as the reader already 
knows, is from two to three weeks later 
than the common red, hence its heads 
have not appeared when the midge fly is 
getting in its work, and the seed is all 
formed and ready to cut before the second 
crop of flies are ready to begin operations. 

I wish to caution the reader against 
buying clover seed containing the midge. 
Miss Eleanor Omerod, of St. Albans, 
England, one of the highest authorities 
on entomology, or "bugology," states that 
the midge has been found in American 
seed exported to England; and Professor 
Beal, in his work on grasses, page 391, 
says that the larvae (of the full brood, of 
course) have been found on seed in the 
market, and he thus explains the rapid 



154 CLOVER FARMING. 

distribution of this pest. Seedsmen will 
require to be particularly watchful in case 
the midge becomes common again, as it 
no doubt will, and thus protect farmers 
against its ravages. The farmer who grows 
seed and sells to his neighbor, will do well 
to provide himself with a magnifying glass 
sufficiently large to detect any kind of im- 
purity; and whether he buys his seed, or 
grows it, it will be well before sowing, to 
steep it in water at a temperature of 120 
degrees, and afterward at a temperature 
of 135 degrees, thus applying what is 
known as the Jenson process so effective 
in destroying smut on oats. 

The reader will pardon me if I call his 
attention to another clover satan well 
known in the East, and which, some years 
ago, became common as far west as 
the state of Iowa, called by the scientists 
"Grapholipha interstinctana," but which 
will be better understood if I call it by the 
common name of the clover seed caterpil- 
lar. That the reader may recognize it on 
sight, I give an illustration for which I am 



SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD 



155 



indebted to the Iowa Agricultural Exper- 
iment Station at Ames. 

It is a 
moth (letter 
"d" of the 
illustration) 
which ap- 
pears about 
the last of 
May, and in 
the short 
space of a 
month goes 
through its THE clover seed caterpillar. 
larval growth, "a," and begins to spin a 
cocoon. In order that our readers may 
more readily distinguish this pest, they 
will notice at u c" the moth greatly mag- 
nified. The damage done by this insect, 
however, is purely to the seed crop. It 
does not bother the seed, but it eats into 
the florets, or small flowers, of which t : 
head is composed, and later into the seed 
vessels of the floret, causing the florets to 




156 CLOVER FARMING 

dry up and the seeds to shell premature- 
ly from their receptacles. There seems 
to be at least three broods in the latitude 
of Iowa, and perhaps four. 

This insect will do no great harm to the 
clover grower who is not counting on a 
seed crop. The remedies for the clover 
seed grower consist in, first, a rotation of 
crops, plowing under the clover every sec- 
ond year — a good thing, by the way, on 
general principles, caterpillar or no cater- 
pillar; second, close fall pasturage so as 
to leave the field free from vegetation in 
the fall, and avoiding putting manure on 
clover fields which he does not intend to 
plow under the next spring; third, early 
cutting. This pest, like most others, has 
numerous parasites which in due time re- 
duce it to such numbers as render it com- 
paratively harmless. 

One of the most annoying adversaries 
of the farmer and clover plant is the clo- 
ver hay worm, which eats up the hay in 
the barn or stack after the farmer has be- 
stowed all his labor and care upon it. The 



SATAN IN THE CLOVER FIELD 



157 



following illustration, for which we are in- 
debted to Professor Cook, will enable the 




FIG. VIII. THE CLOVER HAY WORM. 

reader to identify it, although after it has 
once established itself on his farm he will 
not have much need of the illustration. 

In this, Figures I and 2 represent the 
larvae suspended by threads of their own 
spinning; Figure 3 the cocoon, which may 
i>e found by thousands around the barn 
in which the clover hay worm has been 
doing its work; 4 the chrysalis; 5 repre- 
sents the moth with outspread wings; 6 the 
moth at rest; and Figure 7 the larva con- 



158 CLOVER FARMING. 

cealed in a case of silk which it has spun. 
The eggs are laid on the clover. The 
larvae work in a silken case, and in con- 
structing it, mat the hay into a solid mass. 
A close observer will see them at work in 
the fall, but the ordinary observer is not 
likely to notice them until about Februa- 
ry or March, when the stacks or barns 
will be fairly alive with them. The moths 
begin to appear in the first half of June; 
the eggs seem to be laid on the heads of 
growing clover, and about July 1st the 
young larvae appear. 

I have had a good deal of correspon- 
dence for several years with isolated far- 
mers whose buildings are infested with 
this pest. Some of them write me that 
moisture is quite essential to the develop- 
ment of the worm, and hence only the 
lower two feet of the stack or mow are 
greatly damaged. Some claim that by 
making a stack bottom of timber, logs or 
rails, and raising the stack about two feet 
above the ground, they suffer little dam- 
age; while others claim that even when 



SATAN IN THE CLOVEB FIELD. 159 

the hay is put into a mow entirely free 
from moisture, the worm does its work 
with about the same facility. Inasmuch 
as the insect appears to stay closely by 
buildings that are once infested, the only 
remedy of which I know is to burn all 
stack bottoms before the moths appear, 
and to haul all affected hay out of the 
barn and burn it as early in the spring as 
possible before the insects have left the 
hay to spin their cocoons. Some farmers 
have taken the precaution, and with good 
results, of sprinkling the lower two or 
three feet of their hay when first put in 
the mow with lime. 

I have been frequently asked whether 
the moths will injure the cattle that feed 
on this worm infested hay. Inasmuch as 
a sensible cow will not take very kindly 
to hay bound together with the silken 
bands of these cocoons, I do not think 
there is much danger. 

I have dwelt at length on these various 
insect pests, because with the increase in 
clover growing, which is surely coming, 



160 CLOVER FARMING. 

some or all of these insects will in time 
appear; and while the farmer cannot do 
much in the way of destroying them, he 
can, by a careful study of their nature and 
habits, and by putting his knowledge into 
practice, avoid much serious loss. The 
main dependence, however, is in their nat- 
ural enemies, the parasites peculiar to 
each, which after all is the main protec- 
tion the farmer has against any sort of in- 
sect pests, and in a judicious rotation of 
crops which will enable him to make the 
best use possible of infested fields. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CLOVERS IN THE PERMANENT PASTURE. 

fT REQUIRES about two acres of 
the ordinary permanent pastures, 
even in the best portions of the 
United States, to keep well a steer weigh- 
ing a thousand pounds, seven months in 
the year, or from May 1st to December 
1st. In very many sections three acres 
are required, while three acres of good 
wild prairie grass will keep a steer of the 
same weight five months in an equally 
thrifty condition. It may surprise our 
readers to know that in Great Britain and 
Ireland, on their best lands, naturally no 
better than the prairie lands of the United 
States, one statute, or American acre, will 
keep a steer of the same weight ten or 
eleven months in the year. It is quite 
true that the British farmer is not subject 



162 CLOVER FARMING. 

to the severe drouths that sometimes pre- 
vail in the United States, that the climate 
is more equable, the rainfall, while no 
greater, is more equally distributed, and 
that there is no danger of grasses being 
killed by hard freezing; but on the other 
hand the clovers, with the exception of 
white and alsike, do indifferently well with 
him, and blue grass is of comparatively 
little value; in fact, neither Great Britain 
nor Ireland are blue grass countries. The 
question arises, how may our permanent 
pastures be so improved that they may 
approximate in yield and quality to the 
permanent pastures of the Old World? 

I fully believe that the capacity of our 
permanent pastures may be increased 
fifty per cent., if not in fact doubled, and 
that with very slight expense beyond the 
application of brains. However, before 
any improvement is likely to be made, 
the farmer must first understand that 
grasses, with the exception of the clovers, 
do not enrich land. It is true that land 
becomes enriched while in pasture, first, 



THE CLOVERS IN THE PERMANENT PASTURE. 163 

by the gradual accumulation of humus or 
vegetable mold in the soil, thus modifying 
its texture and enabling it the better to 
withstand drouth when put in corn or the 
cereals; and second, by the gradual but 
slow accumulation of available potash and 
phosphoric acid in the soil, partly the re- 
sult of disintegration, and partly by the 
action of the grass roots, which, as here- 
tofore explained, secrete an acid in which 
these elements become soluble in pure 
water. 

Apart from these two sources of fertili- 
ty, pastures composed of the true grasses 
add nothing to the fertility of the soil. It 
is the experience of farmers in the East- 
ern states that when live stock are sold 
from the permanent pasture and no man- 
ure returned, these pastures gradually fail, 
the grasses becoming thinner and coarser, 
and weeds taking their place, then thorns 
and brush, and finally, in the course of 
time, the pasture becomes a forest. If 
the true grasses added to the fertility of 
the soil, this could not occur. Hence the 



164 CLOVER FARMING. 

farmer must get into his head a clear con- 
ception of an ideal permanent pasture. It 
is not a pasture that grows luxuriantly in 
May and June, suspends growth until 
after the fall rains, and then resumes it 
until freezing weather. This describes the 
majority of permanent pastures in the 
United States, and it is little wonder that 
requires from two to three acres of them 
to sustain a thousand pounds of livestock 
seven months. 

The ideal pasture is made up of the 
greatest possible variety of grasses, true 
and artificial. By artificial grasses we 
mean the clovers. These grasses should 
have, to as great an extent as possible, 
different periods of blooming, so that 
from the middle of April until the ground 
freezes up, there should be a constant suc- 
cession of young shoots, and from early 
in May until October, of bloom. In short, 
the permanent pasture should have more 
grasses than can find room to spread 
themselves, or make their greatest efforts 
at any one period of the year. It is im- 



THK CLOVKR IN THE :>KRMANEJTT PASTTJBK 165 

possible, under American conditions, to 
provide a pcsture of this kind without 
making the largest possible use of the 
clovers, and the future to maintain these 
clovers in the permanent pasture is the 
real reason why, as a rule, it has such 
comparatively little productive capacity. 
I am met at once with the argument 
that blue grass will strangle the larger 
clovers and take complete possession of 
the ground. That is true. Blue grass is 
essentially a monopolist, but like all other 
monopolists, it, in the end, defeats its own 
selfish purposes, and hence must be con- 
trolled for its own good, as well as for 
the good of the public. The welfare of 
the blue grass in the pasture requires that 
about once every two or three years it be 
thoroughly ripped up with a disk, or bet- 
ter, with a disk drill, and timothy and the 
larger clovers be resown. It is of no use 
to sow them on the surface and allow 
them to take their chances. As I have 
said before, the clovers must be covered, 
and a thorough disking, followed by har- 



166 CTX)VKK FARMING. 

rowing, or drilling in with a disk, is essen- 
tial to success. Wherever I have known 
this method to be tried it has added from 
fifty to one hundred per cent, to the pro- 
ductive capacity of the pasture, and there 
is no reason why the method should not 
be adopted on every farm where the ob- 
ject in maintaining a permanent pasture 
is to secure the largest amount of forage 
per acre. I have not adopted this method 
on my own pastures for the reason that it 
would interfere with the gathering of the 
crop of blue grass seed, which is one of 
my annual crops. Nevertheless, in wet 
years and on portions subject to overflow 
or wash from higher lands, the clover and 
timothy put in their appearance, even on 
a blue grass sod of fourteen years' stand- 
ing. 

Where this course has been followed, 
we begin to approximate the ideal perma- 
nent pasture, in which orchard grass be- 
gins to make growth early in April, ac- 
cording to the season, blue grass follow- 
ing a few days later and heading out in 



THE CLOVERS IN THE PERMANENT PASTURE. 167 

the latitude of central Iowa from the 27th 
of April to the 10th of May, followed in 
a few days by the heads of the orchard 
grass, then by the bloom of the white clo- 
ver, followed during the latter end of May 
by the red, and this again in about two or 
three weeks by the mammoth, at' which 
time the blue grass is ripening its seed 
and suspending growth, in ordinary years, 
until fhe fall rains come. During this 
period of suspended growth the clovers 
are in the fullness of their bloom, followed 
by a rank growth of orchard grass in Au- 
gust, and by the time the clovers have 
ripened their seed the blue grass is begin- 
ning its fall work, which it continues with- 
out interruption until the ground freezes. 
Hence, we have a continuance through 
every day of the summer, whether wet or 
dry, hot or cold, of fresh herbage and 
bloom. Clovers thus maintained in the 
permanent pasture, in spite of the blue 
grass, fill the sod with nitrogen and make 
it possible for the blue grass itself to attain 
to a far greater luxuriance than when it is 



J68 CLOVER FARMING. 

allowed to occupy the soil to the exclu- 
sion of everything else but white clover. 
More than that, the clovers balance the 
ration of the stock grazing on the pasture, 
adding to it abundantly the flesh-forming 
elements, thus not only largely increasing 
the yield, but very greatly improving its 
quality as far, at least, as young and grow- 
ing stock is concerned. 

To my mind, one of the greatest defects 
in our modern system of agriculture is 
this failure to secure an ideal permanent 
pasture by the free use of the larger clo- 
vers. While blue grass is a valuable serv- 
ant, it is no safer to allow it to have its 
own way, than it is the valuable horse, or 
the promising son or daughter. No man 
is master of the science of clover growing 
until he has learned to make use of the 
larger clovers to the largest possible ex- 
tent in his permanent pasture. 

I can well imagine the thoughtful read- 
ers whose prairie land has not as yet been 
all broken out, or who may have corners 
of fields, or broken portions of his farm 



THE CLOVERS IN THE PERMANENT PASTURE. 169 

that are as yet untouched by the plow 
and covered with native grasses, asking 
the question: If the larger clovers can be 
reseeded in as tough and unyielding a sod 
as blue grass, why not sown on prairie? 
And the question at once arises, Why not? 
I have been greatly interested for some 
years past in watching the gradual exten- 
sion of red clover on both sides of a road 
winding through a piece of wild prairie. 
It began with a lone stalk here and there 
some years ago, and has now extended 
until for two or three rods on either side, 
the prairie has every appearance of a rich 
clover field. The first seed was evidently 
dropped by passing teams. The sod had 
been broken by farmers turning out with 
their wagons in muddy times, or by cattle 
driven along the roadside. The seeds had 
been dropped from wagons loaded with 
hay, or in some other way, and wherever 
the sod was broken and the seed planted 
the clovers grew. Why not, then, break 
the sod in the way above suggested, and 
at the same time sow the clover? While 



170 CLOVER FARMING. 

I have never tried it, I believe it is entire- 
ly practicable for any farmer having wild 
prairie, in sections where clover growing isa 
success, and in normal years, to seed down 
unbroken prairie with common red or 
mammoth clover, and in the course of two 
or three years transform it into an old 
clover sod which, when turned under, will 
yield a bumper crop of corn the first year. 
I do not say that this will succeed in sec- 
tions of the country where clover growing 
is an experiment, but I do maintain that 
in clover sections in ordinary years clover 
will be as willing to grow where it is sown 
purposely and under the same conditions 
as it. is where it is sown by accident. Of 
course we shall be met with the old, old 
story that the wild nature must be taken 
out of the land by breaking it up in the 
orthodox way and growing a number of 
crops of grain. This idea is firmly fixed 
in the minds of a good many farmers and 
it is useless to argue with them or show 
them that it is a hoary myth with no foun- 
dation in fact, whatever. I simply ask them 



CLOVERS IN THE PERMANENT TASTURE. 171 

to open their eyes and see what is going 
on about them. There is no more wild- 
ness in prairie land along the roadside 
than there is far afield. Clover grows 
whenever it has an opportunity; that is, 
when the sod is broken in any way and 
the seed planted along the roadside. Why 
will it not grow all over the prairie under 
the same conditions? Is it not easier to 
use a disk drill that will rip up the soil and 
plant the seed at the same time, or a sharp 
disk, well weighted, and followed with the 
seed, 'and harrowed, than to pay some 
man for the expense of breaking and stir- 
ring, and be out the use of the field for a 
year? Why not use the help that comes 
to you through the clover plant and take 
the easy way and proffered help of nature 
in transforming the wild prairie into a cul- 
tivated field, with all its stored fertility in- 
tact and supplemented by the fertility 
which clover brings? I have seeded wild 
prairie to clover by simply hauling over 
it second crop clover in which there was 
too little seed to pay for threshing, and 



172 CLOVER FARMING 

allowing the cattle to eat what they want- 
ed and the wind to blow the rest where it 
would, and without disking or drilling. 
Why not take a hint from nature's method 
and save time and labor in transforming a 
wild prairie into a permanent pasture by 
the use of clover? 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THREE CLOVER HARVESTS IN ONE. 

fHAD a very pleasant call the other 
day from young Job Barshear. 
After saying that he guessed that 
the bumblebees and Italians had evident- 
ly got in their best work on his trial field 
of mammoth clover, he said: 

"That dream did father more good than 
all your writing, and he allowed me to 
sow ten acres just to see whether clover 
is all that it is cracked up to be; but he 
still sticks to it that there are not enough 
bumblebees and Italians in the whole 
county to fertilize the bloom in that one 
field. It's done, though. Something has 
done it, as the heads are all full and I am 
going to have a fine crop of clover seed. 
Now, what I want to know is, whether I 
can get a crop like it on this same field 



174 CLOVER FARMING. 

next year, and if not, what am I to do 
with it this fall or next spring?" 

I like the looks of young Job. He 
seems to me to be a very fair type of 
thousands of farm boys who are tired of 
this everlasting grind of growing corn, 
oats, wheat, flax, corn, wheat, oats, flax, 
year after year without change from a 
grain to a grass crop; tired of hard work 
with little profit, and who would like to 
break away from the old methods, to get 
out of the ruts if their parents would only 
let them, or give them a little encourage- 
ment. These boys are not satisfied with 
the county paper, the singing-school and 
the lyceum, but really want to read, think 
and-act for themselves, or else get off the 
farm. 

I know just how they feel, for I have 
been in their shoes. I would like to hold 
these boys on the farm, and yet I know 
that the best of them will not stay there 
until they have something to think about 
that promises them a dollar somewhere, 
to be made by thinking as well as work- 
ing; and so I said: 



THREE CLOVER HARVESTS IN OSE. 175 

"You had better harvest your three 
crops." 

"Three crops!" said young Job. 

"Yes, three crops — a crop of seed, a 
crop of humus, and a crop of nitrogen or 
fertility." 

"I am going to harvest the seed crop, 
sure," he replied; "but I don't even guess 
what you mean by harvesting a crop of 
humus and a crop of nitrogen. You are 
joking, are you not?" 

"Not in the least, but in dead, sober, 
serious earnest, as I am always when I 
talk to you boys. Let me explain. The 
trouble with your father's land was not 
that it was literally worn out, but that it 
was exhausted to a point that continuous 
grain crops did not pay. The good Lord 
always seems to me to have a special care 
of farmers, because they live closer to na- 
ture than do other people, nature being 
one of the books through the study of 
which He reveals Himself toman; and He 
does not allow even the worst soil robbers 
to rob the soil of all its fertility. He keeps 



176 CLOVER FARMING. 

the most of it locked up as your mother 
did the pies and cakes when you were a 
little boy, telling you "they were laid over 
for meddlers'' — at least that is what my 
mother used to say — and gives out the 
potash and phosphoric acid, which makes 
up the ash and are used in constructing 
the frame work of the plant, slowly and 
carefully. And when the lands become so 
far worn out that it does not pay to raise 
grain on them, he allows the farmer to 
wrestle with the store bills and the mort- 
gage until he gets to thinking right hard, 
and is ready to learn, as you and your 
father seem to be just now. By your 
continuous raising of corn, oats, wheat, 
flax, and then back to corn, or some sim- 
ilar rotation, you have wasted, worn out, 
and used up the humus, or vegetable mold, 
or that which makes anew soil look dark. 
You ma) r have often heard your father say 
that the soil of the farm is a good deal 
lighter in color than it was when first bro- 
ken up from the prairie; that it washes 
more, and does not stand either flood or 



THREE CLOVER HARVESTS IN ONE. 177 

drouth as it used to. Next, you have used 
up the nitrogen, that element in the soil 
which feeds the plant with that sort of 
material that makes cattle grow in muscle, 
or flesh and blood. This element of plant 
food is soluble in the form in which the 
plant takes it up, and hence is easily 
washed away. This element of fertility is 
the commonest thing in all the world. 
We are living at the bottom of a sea of 
air supposed to be about forty miles deep, 
of which four-fifths is nitrogen; yet if you 
want to buy it in the shape of commercial 
fertilizers, it would cost you 15 cents per 
pound on the market." 

"The great value of clover is, and in 
this all clovers are alike, that it is one of 
the few crops that can draw on this nitro- 
gen of the air for the muscle-making sort 
of plant food. In this it is like peas and 
beans of all varieties, and a few other cul- 
tivated plants, which, however, it does not 
pay the general run of farmers to grow. 
I'll not tell you just now how it is that the 
clovers make use of this "free nitrogen," 



178 CLOVER FARMING. 

as the scientists call it. The fact that they 
do it is enough, coupled with the other 
fact that none of the true grasses, such 
as blue grass, timothy, or corn (which, as 
I have told you, is only a giant grass,) can. 
When the clover roots are turned under 
and decay, the plant gets the first feed out 
of them, the richness, so to speak, and the 
rest are slowly turned into vegetable mold 
or humus. Thus every clover plant when 
it reaches maturity is capable of furnish- 
ing three crops — a crop of seed, or, if of 
the medium variety, both hay and seed, a 
crop of nitrogen, and a crop of humus." 

"You will save your clover seed crop 
first, of course. You will not have a great 
deal of aftermath, but you will have some. 
I don't count that as a crop. Pasture it 
off as close as you like if you need it; if 
not, no matter. Late this fall, or as late 
as you can safely undertake it, plow that 
field, and thus get ready to harvest the 
other two crops." 

"Why not let it stand another year?" 
asked young Job. 



THREE CLOVER HARVESTS IN ONE. 179 

"Because you are not likely to have a 
full stand next year. Mammoth clover 
is a biennial and dies at the end of the 
second year from planting. Only the 
hard seeds that failed to soak up enough 
water to justify them in starting to grow 
the first year will produce seed next. 
They are a year behind time. The rest 
will die, just as you and I will die when 
our time comes, and if your father and 
the neighbors tell you that they winter 
kill, do not believe them. They mean 
well but they are mistaken. In short, I 
would advise you not to pay any attention 
to what any man tells you about clover 
unless you know that he has succeeded in 
growing clover himself. The nitrogen 
which these dead plants and roots con- 
tain will, in the course of the next year, be 
washed down into the subsoil, or be 
leached out by heavy rains unless you har- 
vest it, and like any other crop, it must 
be harvested when it is ready — not before 
nor after. 

"When you cut your mammoth clover, 



180 CLOVER FARMING. 

take as little of the stalk with it as you 
can so as to secure the heads. It will save 
you time and expense in threshing, and 
the best place for the haulm is on the land. 
I would spread the threshed haulm over 
the thinner spots before plowing, and thus 
increase the crop of humus. Next spring 
when you go on this field with the disk to 
prepare it for corn, you will find the soil 
full of clover roots, which, together with 
the haulm, will in their decay be convert- 
ed into humus, or vegetable mold. This 
is a crop which you cannot sell. It is not, 
therefore, a cash crop. It has none the 
less real value on that account. While 
the roots are decaying they will keep 
your soil from baking after heavy rains, 
and in this way do much to conserve the 
moisture; for it is the baked soil that dries 
out rapidly in times of drouth. As these 
roots decay they will fill it with manure, 
scattered evenly as no mortal hand can do 
it, and you will find that the soil will for 
this reason stand more wet weather as well 
as dry. By saving th's crop as I have di- 



THREE CLOVES HARVESTS IN ONE. 181 

rected, you will add humus enough to last 
it four years, and will even after that have 
more humus in the soil than there was 
when you first began sowing clover seed. 
For evidence of this see Farmers' Bulletin 
No. 78, Department of Agriculture. The 
experiments therein reported show con- 
clusively that if a farmer will grow a crop 
of clover once in four years and harvest 
his crop of humus therefrom as above di- 
rected, his land will increase in the supply 
of this essential element from year to year, 
and in time will be restored to more than 
its virgin fertility. 

"The third crop I wish you to harvest 
is the nitrogen. You can not see it, it is 
true, and it may seem to you likt^ a dream 
crop. Neither can you see such a real 
thing as the air, or your mother's love, but 
you can see the effects of these and a doz- 
en other invisible, intangible, but none the 
less real things that are a part of our daily 
life. This nitrogen which the plant uses 
in building up those elements that go 
to form flesh, hair and blood when fed 



182 CLOVER FARMING. 

to live stock, is partly in the roots and 
partly in the soil in which the clovers grew, 
or in rootlets, perhaps, so small that we 
cannot collect and weigh them; and the 
way to harvest this invisible, intangible 
substance is to prepare a first-class seed 
bed for the coming crop and let the roots 
of that crop gather up the fertility, wheth- 
er in the decaying clover roots, or in the 
soil. Ever since men began to put brains 
into their farming, they have noticed this 
remarkable addition to the fertility of the 
soil that comes in the wake of a crop of 
clover, beans, peas, or any other of the 
legumes, which, by means of the little tu- 
bercles on the roots, take hold of the nitro- 
gen of the atmosphere and place it, by 
their decay, where it can be used by other 
crops which are dependent wholly on the 
soil for their supply of flesh-formers. 

"With a good season next year, you will 
bave twenty-five bushels more corn per 
acre on this field than on similar land not 
clovered. If the season be poor, you may 
not have more than fifteen extra bushels, 



THREE CLOVER HARVESTS IN ONE. 183 

but in the two years you may reasonably 
count on forty bushels additional." 

"Would you, then, advise me to take 
two crops of corn in succession?" 

u Yes; if you did not sow a new field to 
clover last spring. If you did, then I 
would not, but would go on as fast as pos- 
sible and get around your father's farm 
once with clover. When your land gets 
so rich that the oats will lie down in an 
average year, I would lengthen out the 
rotation by taking two crops of corn." 

"I see. Now tell me why father and 
the rest of the grain raisers did not catch 
on to this long ago?" 

"It is very easy to tell you that. Your 
father and the exclusive grain raisers 
came to a new country with little money 
and lots of faith in the richness of the soil. 
They had their lands to pay for, houses 
and stables to build, tools to buy, their 
families to keep, taxes to pay, and they 
had to make the most of it out of the land. 
They went to growing grain for sale, be- 
cause it has the world for a market, and 



184 CLOVER FARMING. 

is a cash crop; and in this the)- did exact- 
ly right. They had, however, two wrong 
ideas. They thought that good prairie 
lands and the best class of timber lands 
would never wear out, and also that clover 
would not grow in a new country. They 
knew how to grow all kinds of grain, hence 
did not buy agricultural books nor read 
first-class agricultural papers. These were 
few and far between, and are too few now. 
When they got hold of an agricultural pa- 
per, so called, edited by a broken down 
lawyer, or some farmer who is running 
away from a mortgage and hiding under 
an editorial chair, or some business man 
who has no sympathy with farmers, they 
looked it over and said: "I know more 
about farming than that fellow does," and 
threw it aside; and in this again they were 
right. In ten or twelve years they ex- 
hausted largely the humus of the soil, and 
it began to bake and wash. It would 
stand neither wet weather nor dry. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of farmers were doing 
the same thing, and supplying from a vir- 



THREE CLOVER HARVESTS IN ONE. 185 

gin soil more grain than the world would 
take at paying prices, and the result was 
that with small crops and comparatively 
low prices, they began to fall behind. By 
this time, however, their habits had be- 
come fixed. They were in an intellectual 
rut and found it easier to jog along in that 
rut and lay the blame on the tariff, or the 
currency, or monopoly, than to take time 
to study and get at the real facts, and then 
make a heroic effort to get out of the rut 
and farm on right lines. It is in fellows 
like you who are young enough to learn 
and who are short on prejudices and long 
on energy and "get up," that the agricul- 
ture of the newer parts of the United 
States largely depends. 

"If you will learn how to harvest these 
three crops this year, then take up the 
subject of crop rotations, and the place of 
clover in these, and, when you get on far 
enough to start in live stock and procure 
suitable buildings, take up the subject of 
clover in the ration, you will lay broad 
and deep the foundation of a happy and 



186 CLOVER FARMING. 

prosperous life as a farmer. If you do 
not read, study, and put correct theories 
in practice, but keep on as your fathers 
have done, growing grain, crop after crop, 
without a rotation having clover as a ba- 
sis, or its starting and ending, you will have 
hard work and hard times right along, and 
finally become discouraged and miserable 
yourselves, blaming your misfortunes on 
others, and making yourselves a prey to 
political shysters of all parties who may 
want your votes to serve their own selfish 
purposes, aiming, in short, to make you 
stepping stones on which they may climb 
into the positions of power and influence. 
I don't say that clover is the only salva- 
tion, but I do say that it is one of the 
most efficient means by which the farmer 
can make himself a thoroughly self-re- 
specting and influential member of any 
community where the soil is adapted to 
its growth, and that clover growing is 
closely connected with everything that is 
desirable in the life of an intelligent and 
prosperous farmer." 



CHAPTER XIT. 

CLOVERS IN THE ROTATION. 

♦f|W OW to get out of a good thing all 
II J there is in it is one of the most 
important as well as difficult 
problems of life. If the men who have 
money, health, and reputation could only 
get all the good out of these that it is 
possible for them to obtain, this would be 
a very happy world, indeed, and we would 
all be much more unwilling even than we 
are now to exchange it for a better one. 

To gather up and utilize to the best ad- 
vantage all the fertility stored in the soil 
by a crop of clover in the two years of its 
growth, is one of the fine points of farm- 
ing, and it can be done only by the adop- 
tion of a systematic rotation of crops, 
carefully mapped out according to the re- 
quirements of the location, climate, and 



188 CLOVER FARMING. 

markets of the farm. When once adopted 
it must be persistently followed if success 
is to be assured. 

At the end of the second year's growth 
of clover, we have, in addition to the hay 
or seed crop, or both, a soil filled with a 
mass of roots about equal in weight to 
that of the hay crop, which, having ful- 
filled their mission, are ready to perish 
and bless succeeding crops by their death. 
It is important, therefore, that the clover 
crop should be immediately followed by 
a gross feeder, that is, a plant that draws 
largely from the soil — a crop that can take 
up the fertility as fast as it is transformed 
into available plant food by bacterial ac- 
tion, or in other words, by decay. Farm- 
ers do not always understand that vege- 
table matter, whether in the shape of cle- 
ver or grass roots or farm yard manure, is 
not a plant food at all in that form, but 
merely the raw material out of which 
plant food is manufactured by bacteria. 

There is no crop grown in the Eastern, 
Central, nor indeed in the Southern states, 



CLOVRR3 IN THE ROTATION Iflfl 

so well adapted to this place in the rota- 
tion as corn. It is a gross feeder. It 
makes its growth at a time when the rain- 
fall and the temperature favor the greatest 
activity among our friends — the bacteria 
in the soil — that work for us, day and 
night, all summer long, and without which 
the most fertile land would become a des- 
ert. Hence, with clover to start with, the 
first crop to follow should, on the majori- 
ty of farms, be corn; and where the corn 
crop is not used, its place should be take i 
by potatoes. Corn is peculiarly adapted 
for this purpose in the rotation, not only 
because it is a gross feeder, but because 
the time of planting permits either fall or 
spring plowing; and if the former is prac- 
ticed, gives ample time for the prepara- 
tion of a seed bed and the killing of the 
weeds by cultivation, by the use of the 
disk or harrow from week to week, prior 
to, and immediately following, the plant- 
ing of the corn. It allows and requires 
the continuous cultivation of the soil until 
July ist, and frequently later, and hence 



190 CLOVER FARMING. 

affords the best opportunities for keeping 
it clear of weeds and hastening the pro- 
cess of decay, at the same time turning 
the products of decay into valuable grain 
and forage. On soils naturally good, that 
is, having in them the mineral elements 
necessary to plant growth, and in good 
condition at the beginning of the rotation, 
it will take two years to use up the fer- 
tility stored by a crop of clover. The 
first and second crops in the rotation, on 
lands naturally good, or that, if somewhat 
exhausted, by frequent croppings, have 
been brought up again to their naturul 
standard of fertility, should be corn. On 
soils not up to the standard, it is advisable 
to take but one crop. 

In sections adapted to the growth of 
winter wheat, a crop of that grain can be 
grown very cheaply by cutting the corn 
at the proper time, and immediately fol- 
lowing with one of the disk drills which 
will sow and cover the wheat perfectly, 
even if by neglect the field has been al- 
lowed to become very weedy. This state- 



CLOVERS IN THE ROTATION. 191 

ment may be questioned by men who 
have had no experience; it will not be by 
those who have. The advantages of this 
method of growing winter wheat are: 
First, that it saves the expense of plowing 
and the preparation of the seed bed, the 
proper cultivation of the corn having pre- 
pared a very good seed bed in advance — 
a better one, in fact, than the farmer can 
give at that season of the year with any 
amount of other preparation on the land 
already in corn. 

Second, this method immediately fills 
the soil with living roots which take up 
plant food about as rapidly as it is'pre- 
pared by the action of the microbes in 
the soil at this season of the year, as the 
temperature falls rapidly after the 20th of 
September, microbic action always de- 
creasing with the temperature. 

Third, it reduces the cost of wheat-grow- 
ing to the minimum, a very desirable thing 
when prices are low, as they are likely to 
to be in the average year. Timothy may 
be sown in the fall with the wheat, and 



192 CLOVER FARMING. 

clover the following February, on the sur- 
face, if the soil be full of moisture, or if it 
contains much clay. If there has been 
little precipitation in the winter, or if the 
soil be sandy or light loam, it is better to 
defer sowing the clover until the soil is in 
good condition in April, and then cover 
with a light harrow, even if the timothy 
seed has to be sown with it to repair the 
damage that harrowing might do the 
young plants grown from the fall sowing. 
Where the first and second crops are corn 
and the third winter wheat, the fourth 
should be timothy and clover for meadow. 
If clover be sown alone, it is preferable to 
use the mammoth variety and pasture it 
off until the loth of June, earlier or later, 
according to the season, and then take a 
seed crop in the fall. If the common red' 
be used in connection with timothy, it will, 
in favorable seasons, give the opportunity 
to take a seed crop if that is desired, and 
will in ordinary seasons, furnish a good 
supply of excellent pasture. 

Let us now take account of the advarb 



COVERS IN THE ROTATION. 193 

tages of this rotation. If we have taken 
but one crop of corn, we have plowed the 
ground but once in three years; if two 
crops, but twice in four years. It is, there- 
fore, economical of labor, a very important 
consideration. The soil has been kept full 
of living roots during the entire period in 
which the preparation of plant food by 
the microbes has been going on in the 
soil, except during the month of April and 
the first two weeks of May. It should be 
remembered that there is no waste of 
plant food during the winter, north of lat- 
itude fort\ r , and but little south for some 
distance, for the double reason that the 
work of the microbes is suspended at this 
season and the ground remains frozen, so 
that there is no waste of fertility from 
washing. Another advantage is, that with 
the exception of the wheat and clover 
seed, which are cash crops, the entire 
product of this rotation is capable of prof- 
itable use as sto:k feed, and hence all is 
returned to the land in the form of ma- 
nure — less the stock sold and th~ manure 



194 OLOVER FARMING. 

wasted. A rotation of this sort will im- 
prove land to any extent desired, as the 
gradual increase of the mineral elements 
through the gradual decay of the rocky 
matter in the soil will more than make up 
for that sold in the form of grain, seed, or 
live stock. 

In sections of the country where the 
character of the soil, the location and the 
taste of the farmer combine to make po- 
tato growing for commercial purposes 
profitable, this crop may be substituted 
for corn in the second year of the course. 
The cultivation of the potato crop pre- 
pares in advance a seed bed for winter 
wheat almost as favorable as corn, and 
has the advantage of avoiding the grow- 
ing of the same crop on the same field in 
successive years. 

In sections of the country where winter 
wheat is not reasonably sure, and rye has 
been found profitable, whether for the 
grain, or grain and straw combined, or for 
the purpose of obtaining some fall and 
spring pasture where tame grasses have 



CLOVERS IN THE ROTATION. 195 

not yet been established, it may be desir- 
able to substitute rye for wheat, and when 
substituted, the rotation otherwise has 
about all the advantages enumerated 
above. These four crops, corn, potatoes, 
wheat or rye, or any combination of them, 
with clover as the beginning and the trans- 
ition crop in the course from grass to 
grain, will form a profitable rotation. In 
fact, this four-course rotation, with clover 
or some other legume as the main grass 
crop, whether alone, or in combination 
with timothy, is a favorite rotation, and 
the one usually followed in all countries 
in the temperate zone, having an ample 
rainfall, where good farming has come to 
stay. 

This four-course rotation may be used 
with almost equal advantage in sections 
where neither winter wheat, winter rye, 
nor potatoes can be grown profitably on a 
large scale, by substituting spring wheat, 
oats, or barley as the harvesters of the 
stored fertility of the clover crop. We 
might remark incidentally that the profit 



196 CLOVER FARMING. 

being equal, barley should be the first 
choice, spring wheat second, and oats 
third. lit harvesting this stored fertility 
of the clover we should always keep an 
eye on the best and easiest way to get 
back to clover as the starting point for a 
new rotation. The main objection to any 
of these three spring grains is that their 
growth is necessarily rapid and luxuriant. 
They shade the ground densely in ordin- 
ary seasons and thus enfeeble the young 
clover plants. In wet seasons they are 
apt to lodge and smother out, while in dry 
seasons they make such large demands on 
the moisture of the soil, having to make 
their crop in about one hundred days, 
that the young clovers are robbed by a 
grain which is under the necessity of tak- 
ing all the moisture that it can get, or fail 
of its mission — that of reproducing its 
kind as certainly and abundantly as pos- 
sible. 

If oats be selected as a nurse crop for 
clover, we strongly urge the selection of 
an early variety, one that will mature di- 



CBLOVERS IN THE ROTATION. 197 

rectly after winter wheat, and in so doing 
avoid at least half the danger of losing a 
stand of clover from the hot suns of the 
middle and last half of July. After our 
experience this year, we will never sow 
late oats when we hope for a stand of clo- 
ver and timothy. 

Some farmers find a three-years' course 
sufficient to utilize the stored fertility of 
the clover, and more particularly when 
they first begin to use it and before their 
land is brought up to its natural condition 
of fertility. I might remark here, by the 
way, that the experience of all countries 
is, that farmers do not usually begin to 
study farming in either a scientific or prac- 
tical way, until they have first squandered 
the stored fertility of the thousands of 
years that have intervened since the sur- 
face of the earth took its present form. In 
this respect they are much like the young 
man who has inherited a fortune which he 
never helped to make, and hence does not 
know its value. If not, he must first spend 
the bulk of it before he begins to under- 



198 CLOVER FARMING. 

stand the first principles of getting on in 
the world independently of outside help. 
The great majority of lands, either in tim- 
ber or prairie countries, are thus exhausted 
of a large amount of their available fer- 
tility, and when the farmer, like the prod- 
igal in the parable, "comes to himself," he 
will often find it an advantage to use only 
two years, instead of three, in harvesting 
his clover fertility, and hence is best 
served by a short, or three-years' course, 
after he has first secured a stand of clover. 
He can transform the four-years' course 
into a three, by simply dropping out the 
second crop of corn or potatoes, and go- 
ing directly from corn or potatoes, the 
first crop after clover, to winter wheat, 
rye, or either of the spring grains above 
mentioned, and then getting back to clo- 
ver. On the other hand, where farms have 
been brought up by the three- or four- 
years' course to their normal condition 
of fertility, and in the meantime the farm- 
er has become a stockman as well, he can 
readily change the four-years' course into 



CLOVERS IN THE ROTATION. 199 

a five, by using clover and timothy to seed 
down, and in the fifth year take either a 
crop of timothy seed, in which there will 
be more or less clover seed, or a crop of 
clover in which there will be more or 
less timothy, or use it as a pasture. In 
this he will have no more plowing of the 
land than in the four-years' course, and 
can gradually by this method decrease his 
grain raising and increase his stock farm- 
ing, thus supplying himself with an addi- 
tional amount of manure with which to 
increase the fertility of land already rich. 
Alfalfa, in sections where it is used as 
a substitute for clover, does not fit nearly 
so well in the rotation which is necessary 
to harvest its stored fertility. In the first 
place it is only on certain lands that it can 
be used as a substitute and hence cannot 
come into general use in those sections 
of the country which have not as yet been 
able to avail themselves of the benefits of 
clover. In the second place it does not 
do nearly so well with a nurse crop, and 
hence requires the exclusive use of the 



200 CLOVER FARMING. 

land one year. In the third place it does 
not become so well established the first 
year as does clover, and hence the rota- 
tion must be longer. Three or four years 
will be required to get the profit out of an 
alfalfa seeding, and when once a stand has 
been secured, it is so valuable that the 
farmer is not willing to plow it up until he 
has had the advantage of more of the 
same sort of good forage crops. Proba- 
bly as good a rotation as any in alfalfa 
sections would be the first, second and 
third years alfalfa, the fourth potatoes, 
and the fifth, winter wheat; after which 
the land can be prepared for seeding to 
alfalfa the next year. 

Tn sections too remote from the market 
to make potato growing profitable, and 
where the elevation is not too great to 
grow corn, this might take its place; and 
where the elevation is too great, perhaps 
the best thing would be to plow under in 
August or the first of September after the 
second or third crop of alfalfa has been 
removed, and grow two or three crops of 
winter wheat in succession. 



CHAPTER XV. 

CLOVERS IN THE PASTURE AND FEED LOT. 

^^OLOMON, that wise old fellow who 
T?J knew about everything that was 
worth knowing in his day, includ- 
ing farming — "sidewalk farmer" as he was 
— was accustomed to remark, as he no- 
ticed the failures of men to use properly 
that which cost them time, labor and 
money: "The slothful man roasteth not 
that which he took in hunting." We 
have often thought of Solomon's remark 
as we noticed farmers feeding out their 
clover hay. They have bought, or rented, 
land, gone to all the cost of preparing the 
soil, purchasing the seed, securing the 
stand, making the hay, and sometimes 
even providing a good shed or barn in 
which to keep it in its best condition, and 
then thrown away much of their gain, not 



202 GLOVER FARMING. 

so much by a wasteful manner of feeding 
it out, as by an injudicious selection of the 
class of stock to which they feed it. No 
farmer would select a binder with which 
to cut his meadow, nor a mower to cut 
his wheat, if it stood up at all. The aver- 
age farmer shows much wisdom in select- 
ing the tools which will do the most and 
best work with a given amount of labor; 
but he often fails to realize that clover, 
whether in the pasture or in the feed lot, 
is but one among many tools, and that its 
work is quite different from that of his 
other feeding tools, such as timothy, corn 
fodder, oats straw, or the feed grains, such 
as rye, oats, or barley. If some farmers 
could get over their prejudice against 
book farming and listen for a little while 
to what scientific men are trying to tell 
them about the balanced ration, and the 
food requirements of different kinds of 
stock, and would follow outtheirteachings 
in a practical, sensible way, they would 
get a great deal more value out of their 
clover, both in the pasture and in the feed 
lot. 



CLOVERS IN THE PASTURE AND FEED LOT. 203 

No farmer would long employ a physic- 
ian in the family who was ignorant of the 
effects of his medicines, or who did not 
know the relative strength and efficiency 
of each ingredient in the dose. He would 
not employ a painter who did not know 
how to mix his paints so as to produce 
any desired color, or shade of color. The 
growing and feeding of animals for the 
market, is the main work of the advanced 
farmer. The various food stuffs on his 
farm are the raw materials, and it is alto- 
gether as important for him to know the 
composition of each, and the best method 
of mixing them to produce a definite re- 
sult, as to know what kind of tools to 
select for a certain work, or for the phy- 
sician to know the strength and effect of 
his medicines, or the painter to know the 
colors and the proper method of blending 
or mixing his paints. 

In farming we begin the preparation of 
the seed bed with the plow, we finish it 
with the harrow; the physician breaks up 
the fever with one medicine, he completes 



204 CLOVEB FARMING. 

the cure with another; the painter primes 
with one paint, he finishes with another. 
In handling live stock for profit, we first 
grow, then finish. The food for growth 
is mainly of one character, and for finish- 
ing, mainly of another. Profitable growth 
is made, always and everywhere, on foods 
consisting largely of flesh-formers, which 
the scientists call albumen, protein, and 
nitrogen, by which they mean the various 
compounds of nitrogen; while the finish- 
ing is done with foods composed largely 
of heat-makers and fat-formers, called 
carbohydrates. All foods carry carbohy- 
drates as fuel power. As compared with 
the. albuminoids, they vary, considering 
only the dry matter, from about four to 
one, to thirty to one. As every growing 
animal requires about five to one for health, 
we call all foods that have about the ciuan- 
tity the animal requires, or less, albumin- 
oids; and those that contain much more 
fuel power than the animal requires, car- 
bohydrates. The wise farmer, therefore, 
feeds albuminoids, and finishes off with 



CLOVERS IN THE PASTURE AND FEED LOT. 205 

foods rich in carbohydrates and in pro- 
portion to the requirements of the animal. 
Pregnant animals, milk cows and horses 
hard at work, require about the same sort 
of food as growing stock, and for very 
plain and obvious reasons. The horse 
hard at work is exercising his muscle and 
necessarily wasting it, and that waste must 
be repaired with muscle-making food, or 
albuminoids; hence, the intelligent farmer 
prefers oats as horse feed in the summer, 
and adds corn in winter to keep up the 
animal heat. The milk cow is furnishing 
a product rich in muscle-making material, 
hence needs muscle-making food; and the 
more rnilk she gives, the richer the food 
should be in albuminoids, or muscle-mak- 
ers. The pregnant animal is developing 
the foetus, composed of bone, gristle and 
water, and hence, needs a food well sup- 
plied with muscle-making, as well as bone- 
forming material. 

Let us now apply these simple and ob- 
vious principles to feeding clover: first, in 
pasture. Clover in the early stages of its 



206 clov'k:: farming. 

growth, is one of the very richest feeds, 
known to the farmer, the dry matter alone 
being considered. When in full bloom 
it has one of albuminoids to less than four 
of carbohydrates, and still less in the 
period preceding. It is then almost half 
as rich in albuminoids, the dry matter of 
each alone considered, as oil meal. As it 
matures it becomes more largely carbo- 
hydrate in its character, but still the rich- 
est of all growing plants in muscle-form- 
ers, hence its great value as a pasture for 
growing pigs— doubly valuable on West- 
ern farms because it prevents the incalcu- 
lable injury that would otherwise be done 
by the "all corn" ration that constitutes 
the food of the pigs on so many farms of 
the West. Where steers under two years 
old are being finished and are expected to 
grow in flesh or muscle, as well as take on 
fat, no ration will accomplish the purpose 
so well as a pasture in which the clovers 
largely predominate in connection with 
dry or soaked corn and water. 

It is customary in the fall of the year 



CLOVERS IN THE PASTURE AND FEE;> LOT. 20? 

for farmers to keep their cattle out of the 
stalk fields and on pastures, largely clover, 
until the snow covers the ground, and then 
to turn them into the corn fields. There 
is usually more or less corn left from the 
husking which measurably decreases the 
waste of feed, otherwise inevitable, grow- 
ing out of the fact that corn stalks have a 
ratio of one, to anywhere between twenty- 
five and thirty, depending on the exposure 
of the stalks to the weather. The growth 
of young cattle on this kind of feed will 
be limited to the amount of flesh-formers 
contained therein, and the reason why 
young cattle shrink on corn stalks after 
the corn has been exhausted, is because 
they are compelled to eat and digest an 
enormous quantity of the stuff in order 
to utilize the small proportion of flesh- 
formers it contains. Why not turn into 
the cornfields as soon as possible and al- 
low the cattle to have the range, part of 
the day, of the clover pasture? In this 
way they would utilize fully the clover, 
and at the same time give double value to 



2C8 CLOVER FARMING. 

the food supplied by the corn stalks. Yhey 
would at least approximate in some degree 
to the requirements of the cattle, to say 
nothing of the greatly lessened danger of 
impaction, the result of the vast amount 
of super dry matter that they are com- 
pelled to consume in order to meet the 
wants of the system. 

A similar waste is constantly going on 
in the feed lots on most farms. Farmers 
usually keep one or two teams up in the 
winter to do the running of the farm and 
the chores. These horses have no more 
exercise than is necessary for health. To 
feed them clover hay is a waste, and es- 
pecially so if they are fed oats as a grain 
feed." All that horses need is enough of 
muscle-formers to repair the waste of light 
work, and carbohydrates to keep up the 
animal heat. A moderate feed of oats 
and corn, or oats straw and corn fodder, 
is all that they require to keep them in 
good condition. A farmer has a flock of 
breeding ewes. They should be fed, not 
with the idea of storing away fat, but of 



CLOVERS IX THE PASTURE AND FEED LOT. 209 

providing for the growth of the foetus and 
the wool, both of which require an albu- 
minous ration. That is one place to use 
the clover hay. Clover hay alone, or clo- 
ver and corn fodder, or sheaf oats and 
corn fodder, or better still, these alternat- 
ing day by day, or in alternate feeds, is all 
that they require; and the less corn that 
is fed to them, the better for the lambs 
and the wool and the health of the sheep. 

Another place to use the clover hay to 
very great advantage, is with the dairy 
cows. They are usually pregnant, large 
demands are made on the system for milk, 
and as they cannot make bricks without 
straw are the preferred ciass of stock, 
where there are no sheep on the farm to 
utilize the clover hay to the best advan- 
tage. 

Except as a change of diet, always 
grateful to the animal, we would not give 
clover hay to mature steers on a full feed 
of grain, while it may be fed to advantage 
to yearlings which it is intended to finish 
for the market, for the reason above given, 



210 CLOVER FARMING. 

that these are expected to make a gain in 
flesh as well as in fat; and there is no form 
in which flesh-making, or muscle-making, 
elements can be given so cheaply as in the 
form of clover hay. Horses over two 
years old, if allowed to run in the blue 
grass pasture, even if covered with snow, 
with a hay stack, shelter, and plenty of 
salt and water, will get along well enough 
during the winter season; but the wean- 
lings and yearlings should have a chance, 
if possible, at good clover hay. In short, 
the younger the animal, the stronger the 
claim it should have on the clover hay 
stored on the farm. 

I am quite well aware that it is not al- 
ways practical on the ordinary farm to 
carry out the suggestions above made. It 
is not always possible, nor, indeed, often 
possible, on the average farm, to so divide 
up the live stock as to give every one the 
portion best adapted to its wants, and the 
owner must do, as he is compelled to do 
in so many other things, the best he can. 
It is, however, important to know what is 



CLOVERS IN THE PASTURE AND FEED LOT. 211 

the theoretical best, and make it the prac- 
tical best to as great an extent as possible. 
Where he is carrying mature stock through 
on the cheapest basis, he can readily find 
cheaper foods on the farm than he him- 
self can furnish in the- shape of clover hay. 
He should keep this one fact distinctly in 
mind, that clover hay is the only forage 
crop grown on the farm that is in itself 
anything like a balanced ration for grow- 
ing stock, and that all other fodders, to 
which may be added corn, contain an ex- 
cess of carbohydrates and need to be bal- 
anced with some muscle-making food in 
order to use them to the best advantage; 
and while clover hay will not balance up 
scientifically any of the straws, millet or 
corn fodder, it will, if fed in connection 
with these foods, render them almost 
doubly valuable, to say nothing of the 
food value of the clover itself. 

In the above, I have been advising that 
which every observant farmer knows to 
be true in his own experience, and hence 
have not been adding anything to the sum 



212 CLOVER FARMING. 

of his knowledge. I have merely stated 
facts of which he is advised already, and 
needs only to be reminded. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SUBSTITUTES FOR CLOVER. 

^^HE farmer who has thoroughly mas- 
^^ tered the art and science of clover 
growing in the Northern states, 
does not usually care to own land where 
clover does not do well. He has seen not 
only farms, but whole sections of country 
worn out by continuous cultivation. He 
knows by experience that the first of the 
great elements of fertility to be exhausted 
is the nitrogen, and if he cannot restore 
this element by clover, or some other legu- 
minous crop, he must resort to commer- 
cial fertilizers containing nitrogen. If he 
cannot draw on the winds of heaven he 
must draw upon his pocketbook. He is 
not afraid to buy a so-called worn-out farm 
where he knows clover will grow, but he 
wisely declines unless he can grow either 



214 CLOVER FARMING. 

this great fertilizer and forage crop, or em- 
ploy a substitute therefor. 

The area on which clover does well is, 
after all, limited: on the west by a region 
of scant rainfall; in large sections of the 
South by extreme heat, as well as soils de- 
ficient in lime; and on the north by an ex- 
treme winter temperature. There are also 
sections in which the common clovers did 
well for a time, but will not now grow ex- 
cept in a long rotation. In many, in fact 
in most, sections of Europe, the land re- 
fuses to grow clover, except once in a sev- 
en or eight years' course. It is evident, 
therefore, that invaluable as clover is to a 
large section of the United States, there 
are very large areas on both continents for 
which substitutes must be provided. 

I have written in vain if the reader does 
not clearly understand that one great value 
of clover lies in its ability to draw on the 
atmosphere for the nitrogen, with which 
it restores the wasted fertility of the soil, 
and also the muscle-making elements of 
animal food which render it so valuable 



SUBSTITUTES FOR CLOVER. '215 

in the pasture and barn. It thus becomes 
the handmaid and helper of grains and 
other grasses which are dependent for 
their nitrogen on the soil al< ne. It fol- 
lows, therefore, that any substitute for clo- 
ver must have the same power of using at- 
mospheric nitrogen, and, therefore, must 
belong to the family of legumes, the only 
family, so far as known, that is in any way 
independent of the soil for its. supply of 
nitrogen. No member of this family, how- 
ever, possesses all the good qualities of 
the two larger varieties of clover, and 
hence the regions which grow these luxu- 
riantly will always be among the most 
highh' favored portions of the earth. 

The two plants that come nearest taking 
the place of the red and mammoth clovers, 
are the crimson clover and alfalfa. The 
first is an annual, sown in August or Sep- 
tember, and harvested in May or June. It 
has then fulfilled its mission. Crimsofl 
clover has been widely and persistently 
advertised as a valuable crop in the .Mid- 
dle and Northwestern states. It does not, 



216 CLOVER FARMING 

however, suit either the climate or the ag- 
riculture of these sections, and I do not 
recommend it north of latitude forty, nor 
west of the Alleghany Mountains. It 
thrives, however, on the light soils of the 
Atlantic coast as far north as Delaware 
and New Jersey, and inlhis section is the 
sheet anchor of the "trucker," the market 
gardner, and the small farmer. 

Of alfalfa I have spoken at length in 
Chapter VIII. While equal, if not super- 
ior to the larger clovers as a meadow grass, 
it is not nearly so valuable as pasture. Its 
cultivation is limited to lands capable of 
irrigation, or to lands with a porous sub- 
soil in which it can send its roots down to 
permanent moisture, whether that be ten 
or thirty feet. 

In many sections of the South, and in 
the semi-arid portions of the Western 
states, the sweet clover (melilotus alba) 
and bokara clover, take the place, to some 
extent, of the common clovers. In clover 
countries this plant is regarded as a weed, 
growing freely wherever sown by chance, 



SUBSTITUTES FOR CLOVER. 217 

along roadsides, or on rough waste lands, 
and valuable only as bee pasture. Stock 
do not relish it, and in towns where cattle 
have free range, it is seldom eaten when 
othe* grasses are abundant. When, how- 
ever other grasses fail, it is found to have 
very considerable feeding value, and as a 
fertilizer, it is doubtful if it is exceeded, 
or even equaled by any of the clovers. It, 
therefore, can be used as a substitute in 
the sections already mentioned. 

In latitude forty, and south to the Gulf, 
the soja or soy bean can be used to a cer- 
tain extent as a substitute for the clovers, 
both as a fertilizer and forage plant. It 
can not, however, be used as a pasture, 
and is a grain, rather than a forage crop, 
but can be used as a forage crop in the 
same way that we use corn when cut for 
fodder. The Southern states have not yet 
learned the value of the soy bean. 

In the more southern sections where the 
common clovers fail on account of the ex- 
cessive heat, or the lack of the necessary 
elements in the soil, or where neither al- 



218 CLOVER FARMING. 

falfa nor crimson clover thrive, perhaps 
the best of all known substitutes for the 
larger clovers is the cow pea. There are 
varieties of this valuable plant adapted to 
almost any variety of soil and climate as 
far north as latitude forty-two. It can be 
sown early or late, and in the extreme 
South, as late as the last of July as the 
second crop of the year. It is especially- 
valuable as a fertilizer in sections where, 
owing to the heat, decomposition is very 
rapid and the rainfall so excessive that the 
nitrates are washed out of the soil as fast 
as formed. So long as the atmosphere is 
four-fifths nitrogen, and the cow pea has 
tubercles on its roots, there is no need of 
the* Southern farmer exhausting the fertil- 
ity of land, naturally rich in the mineral 
elements. If he will but sow cow peas in 
his corn, or between crops of cotton and 
either pasture, mow, or plow under the 
crop, he will have an unfailing source of 
nitrogen. 

The cow pea can be used to advantage 
in the latitudes of southern Missouri, Kan- 



SUBSTITUTES FOR CLOVER. 219 

sas, and south wherever clover does not 
ilourish. Sown on fallow ground in any 
section, it will prove a valuable substitute 
for clover both as a fertilizer and forage 
crop. 

Neither has a kind Providence left any 
country without a substitute for white clo- 
ver, so valuable in the pasture. Its place 
is taken in the South by the Japan clover, 
so-called (lespedeza striata). This was 
introduced by accident into the South At- 
lantic states about fifty years ago, and dur- 
ing that time has spread over almost the 
entire Southern country. Like nearly all 
substitutes for clover in a climate of great 
and long continued summer heat, it is an 
annual, beginning to ripen its seeds in Au- 
gust and continuing until killed by frost. 
It does not, except in the richest bottom 
lands, produce sufficient forage to justify 
cutting it for a hay crop, but it is through 
all the South a good Samaritan, providing 
its own charges, sowing itself wherever 
there is an abandoned field, and thus bind- 
ing up the broken-hearted land. Like the 



220 CLOVER FARMING. 

clovers and all the legumes, it has the 
power of storing the soil with nitrogen, 
and is thus a boon to the Southern farmer 
of which he is only beginning to appreci- 
ate the value. 

Even in the pine forests of Texas and 
Arkansas, where nature seems to frown at 
any effort to grow crops beyond water- 
melons and sweet potatoes, we have found 
growing, wherever there was a chance of 
sunlight, a small vining clover with a pod 
like a pea, containing four seeds, known 
as the Carolina clover, and which is cer- 
tainly worthy of cultivation in those sec- 
tions, and on the richer lands as well, as a 
a pasture grass. Unlike the Japan clover, 
this is said to be a perennial, hence doubly 
valuable. 

For California with its two seasons — its 
wet winter and rainless summer — Provi- 
dence, ever thoughtful of the herds and 
flocks, has provided the bur clover (medi- 
cago denticulata), a relative of alfalfa and 
a plant of great economic value, whether 
as a natural fertilizer or pasture grass. It 



8UB8TITUTKS FOR CLOVER. 221 

grows during the rainy season, produces 
an abundance of seed in the form of burs, 
which in the dry season take the place of 
grain in the feeding of live stock. I have 
seen sheep by the thousand feeding and 
apparently thriving on the seeds of the 
bur clover in fields seemingly as bare of 
verdure as the well-trodden highway. This 
clover reaches eastward into western 
Texas, and a closely related variety (med- 
icago maculata) may be found on the 
sandy plains of western Nebraska. 

Without going into the subject exhaus- 
tively, it will be readily seen that in sow- 
ing these clovers and clover-like plants 
over all portions of North America, capa- 
ble of a systematic agriculture or profita- 
ble pasturage, the Lord of the herds and 
flocks, as well as of men, had in mind 
plans of vast benevolence. He has pro- 
vided in these plants flesh- and muscle- 
formers for the flocks and herds in winter 
as well as summer; ordained, also, that 
man should not be without the means of 
restoring fertility to the soil after it had 



222 CLOVER FARMING. 

been apparently exhausted by his improv- 
idence and greed. If to the northern and 
central Mississippi Valley states He has 
given the best of the clovers and legumes, 
it was because these states were intended 
to be the granary of the continent — the 
source of supplying bread and meats to 
the hungry nations of the Old World. He 
did not intend that any portion of this 
continent should be doomed to sterility 
and barrenness through the folly of man, 
but has provided in the clover and clover- 
like plants a means of restoring fertility 
to the land of every farmer and stock- 
grower who is willing to work with Him 
in carrying out His vast schemes of be- 
nevolence toward all His creatures. 



THE END. 



1899 



"On(Ie Henry's Letters 
to the Farm Boy." 



A companion volume to "Clover Farming." 
It is made up of a series of letters written from the 
piardpoint of an old friend to the family. It is a 
fc x>k that should be read by every boy and every 
father in the country. As interesting as a novel 
and full of simple philosophy and sound teaching. 
Price, paper covers, 35 cents. ""} 

„ r >, 

Wallaces' Farm Library No. j. 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE WALLACE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

DES MOINES, IOWA. 



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